WEBVTT

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The poem called "Ode on the
Elaboration of Interval";

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interval in my work, of
course, is all important.

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This distance between
the here and the there,

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the now and the then are.

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And as the poem proceeds,
I find over and over,

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that I change tense.

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I move from a past or a present
indicative into a conditional.

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And the conditional is
basically the areas of language

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that remain open, that remain
potential, the spreading

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of language, the possibilities
inherent in language.

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And it's as if one
could speak it,

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one could live it, as if the
words would have to come first,

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that served to predicate the
occurrence, the experience,

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the occasion.

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So the poems shift gear almost
inevitably at a certain moment

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from the past or present
into the conditional,

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which isn't a utopic space
so much as a potential space.

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It's the might, it's the
could, it's the would,

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the possibilities that are
still allotted within experience

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in which language and crossing
a kind of resonant field

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reaches toward.

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The same wave that fed
once on its own unraveling,

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all mica now, and schist,

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Ground heart, the dark organs
of image had gradually emerged,

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come crawling from under,
gathering in my crossed arms,

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my very own shoulders,

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Planks and clapboard, our
quick identifications,

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each thing so indissociably
itself, self-imbued.

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Even air, the air ebullient, the
accessibility now of all matter,

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those massive appropriations.

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Worked only for the
disparate, that part,

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the dark slip of muscle,
the fanned shadow of lashes,

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which had no equivalence, which
held, held us just out of reach.

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Was, it would seem, like a
running curtain, nearly a world.

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There were, we know, no others.

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Out onto the windy
stage of our landscapes

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would wheel clouds, trundle
entire cartloads of replica,

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gods too, in trompe
l'oeil, the whole spectacle

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of the pre-empted.

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Nothing's too far,
it would seem,

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if in flaking it reflect,
if spoken, resound.

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Whereby would, might, the lost
panoply of the conditional.

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Yes, even here within the
lens of my own breath,

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you, of all words, the very
first might at last issue.

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Be blown over the bright pages.

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Brought to that
luster, those shadows,

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these rocks that glisten in the
very lee of their own saying,

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to where, that is, substance
itself might substantiate.

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No, it's not me now
who's being illusive,

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but the overwhelming immediacy
of each vacated instant,

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the surfeit of so
much scuttled letter.

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Be sign and its effluence.

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The draft of your
scarf as, already, it

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enters into interval.

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There, just over
the ocean's gray

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echo, gather buttercup and
rue, bindweed and gentian,

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give to each instance
its own measure,

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For breath against breath,
it's through the words

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we'd accede: phrase you initiate
and I, in diastole, pursue.

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