WEBVTT

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I want to read you a poem that
is a little more extended.

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But I hope that it's
not a difficult poem

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to listen to because it
keeps changing its subject.

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So if you get tired
of one part of it,

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you can have faith that there's
another train coming in a minute

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and you can get on that one.

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Let me tell you a
couple of things about.

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It refers, first of all, to
the aftermath of Hurricane Bob

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a couple of years ago
in New England, which

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was sort of diluted by
the time it got to us.

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But there was still
enough of it to really do

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a number on my town.

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It stripped every
leaf off of the trees,

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and this was in August.

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So when it was over,
it suddenly looked

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like the middle of winter,
except that everything

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was covered with this kind
of substance like pesto--

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it was like shredded
leaves and salt--

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all over everything,
which took a lot

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of scrubbing to get rid of.

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The grass was black.

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The trees were
completely leafless.

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And about a month
later, things began

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to bud again so that by October,
the lilacs were in bloom

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and the chestnut trees had
fruit and flowers at once.

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And it was a very
disorienting time.

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And that gets talked about here.

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The poem also talks
about some music

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of Beethoven's, one of
the late quartets, which--

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I don't know enough about
music to describe this

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very accurately, but
to my ear, this music

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sounds very different from
anything else of its era.

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It sounds quite modern,
intimate, and rather dissonant,

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and without that kind of
feeling of balance or order,

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but much more tempestuous.

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Originally, one of these late
quartets-- and it's Opus 130--

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had a piece at the end
called the Grosse Fuge,

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the great fugue.

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And when it was first
performed, the audience

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hated it so much that
Beethoven threw off that ending

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and wrote something
much more acceptable.

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Today, sometimes it's
performed with that.

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That notion of trying to
listen to that difficult music

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is part of this poem
too, as is the idea

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of a fugue, where themes are
stated and turned around.

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Finally, the poem
talks about a friend

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of mine's illness, his
struggle, in particular,

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with AIDS-related dementia.

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There is a discussion of an MRI,
which is a magnetic resonance

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imaging.

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sort of the high tech
way of photographing

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the inside of the body,
in this case, the brain.

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I don't know if there's anything
else I need to say about this.

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Oh, and there's is a
little bit of Sanskrit.

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I'm getting very fancy here.

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You'll know it when
you hear it, I hope.

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So have faith, only
two more poems.

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This is next to the last.

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It's called "Grosse Fuge."

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"This October
morning, soft lavender

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bursts above the Plymouth
parked on the neighbor's lawn.

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Lilacs wildly off schedule,
decking themselves

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a second time.

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Downtown on the
universalist green,

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the chestnuts dropped
their sleek mahogany

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under lantern branches,
talalay blooms, season

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of contradictions,
Tempest wrought.

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Summer's hurricane
battered each branch

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bare, skies suddenly
wider, space

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in heaven opened, our garden
scoured, as if by frost,

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the little stars' jewel
fires more consuming.

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That was August.

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But all at once, we wanted to
unpack sweaters, wrap ourselves

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in warm, saturated tones, gems
in harvest, torched leaves.

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But when real autumn
came, the calendar,

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down to its last
late pages, the world

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displayed its strange
dependability in disarray,

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rekindling.

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Crocus quickened, spiking
to the fallen leaves,

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then cherry and
box-alder budded out,

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and now, this rash,
breathtakingly sudden bloom.

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Bobby arrives on a
Saturday and sits

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on the end of the couch, scarlet
parka and a red, Jamaican hat

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fished from the
closet pulled tight.

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Why is he so cold?

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This false spring.

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Now he looks-- how to say it--

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small, not just his
circumstances, but him,

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somehow reduced.

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His landlord doesn't
want him back.

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His sisters dropped him
on the side of the highway

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at a rest stop, his
clothes in three

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flowered yellow pillowcases.

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My mother, he says, doesn't
want me crying in the house.

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She doesn't want
my tears around.

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She fed him on paper plates,
kept his laundry separate,

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and didn't tell his
father the diagnosis.

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We say, of course he can stay.

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And Sunday, he wakes up saying,
I have four things inside me--

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a backyard going around and
around in my head this way,

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lawn furniture
spinning the other way,

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and right here, in
my chest, chairs.

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It's not that they hurt.

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It's that I can't figure how I'm
going to get them the fuck out.

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He never says just what
the fourth thing is.

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This month, the new
comes so dizzyingly

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quick it coexists with
all autumn's evidence.

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By the marsh, the
usual sumptuous russets

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sparked by pointillist asters.

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Rugosas dot the
goldenrods' velveteen.

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Tulips sprout the
crab leaves out.

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How are we to read
this nameless season--

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renewal, promise, confusion?

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Should we be glad or
terrified at how quickly

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things are replaced?

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Never again the particulars
of that August garden waving

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cosmos, each leaf's
crisp darkness in relief

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against the stars, no
way to know what's gone,

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only the new flowerings,
the brilliance that

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candles after rain
every day, assuming

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its position in the huge
gorgeous hurry of budding

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and decline, bloom
against dry leaf,

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unreconciled sorts of evidence.

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I have been teaching myself
to listen to Beethoven,

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or trying to, learning to hear
the late quartets, how hard it

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is to apprehend something
so large in scale

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and yet so minutely
detailed, like trying

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to familiarize yourself exactly
with the side of a mountain.

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This birch, this rock pool,
this square mosaic yard

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of tesserated leaves,
autumnal, a jeweled reliquary,

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trying to see each
element of the mountain

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and then through
them, the whole,

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since music is only
given to us in time,

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each phrase parceled
out in time.

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Thursday he says,
all night, I had

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to make Elizabeth
Taylor's wedding cake.

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It was a huge cake with
nine towers, all of them

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spurting like fountains.

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And she didn't like it.

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And I had to make it again.

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Then the thing was it wasn't
really a cake anymore.

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I'm trying to understand the
grosse fuge, though I'm not

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sure what it might
mean to understand

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the stream of theme and
reiteration, statement

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and return.

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What does it mean, chaos
gathered into a sudden bronze

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sweetness, an autumnal
flourish, and then

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that moment denied,
turning acid,

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disassembling,
questioning, rephrased?

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MRI, charcoal
flowers, soft smudges,

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the image that is
Bobby, or Bobby's head,

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or rather, a specific, plain
bisecting his head pictured

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on video, cinematic,
rich inky blacks

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threaded by
filaments and clouds.

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I stand behind the door and
watch the apparition taking form

00:09:19.140 --> 00:09:22.860 align:middle line:84%
beyond the silhouette of the
technician who wore gloves

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to touch him, fully
clothed, dry, harmless.

00:09:27.540 --> 00:09:30.540 align:middle line:84%
But the coward wrapped
himself in latex charms

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anyway to ward off
the black angel.

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On the screen, like a game, he
makes a Bobby of light, numbers,

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and images, imagines Bobby
as atoms of hydrogen,

00:09:44.130 --> 00:09:48.150 align:middle line:84%
magnetic, aligned, so that
radio waves transmitted

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toward the body bounce
back, broadcasting

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this cold smudged sketch, brain
floating on its thick stem

00:09:57.780 --> 00:10:00.900 align:middle line:84%
and little strokes
of dark everywhere,

00:10:00.900 --> 00:10:05.070 align:middle line:84%
an image I can't read and
wasn't supposed to see.

00:10:05.070 --> 00:10:07.680 align:middle line:84%
But who could stay
away from the door?

00:10:07.680 --> 00:10:10.320 align:middle line:84%
Which of these
darknesses, if any,

00:10:10.320 --> 00:10:12.630 align:middle line:84%
is the one which
makes his bed swim

00:10:12.630 --> 00:10:18.600 align:middle line:84%
all night with boxes, insistent
forms repeated, rearranged.

00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:25.470 align:middle line:84%
In one of those, he says,
is the virus, a box of AIDS.

00:10:25.470 --> 00:10:26.670 align:middle line:90%
And if I open it--

00:10:26.670 --> 00:10:30.450 align:middle line:90%


00:10:30.450 --> 00:10:37.050 align:middle line:84%
I bring home, from each walk to
town, pockets full of chestnuts

00:10:37.050 --> 00:10:41.760 align:middle line:84%
and fill a porcelain bowl with
their ruddy, seducing music,

00:10:41.760 --> 00:10:46.530 align:middle line:84%
something like cellos, something
that banks deep inside the body.

00:10:46.530 --> 00:10:49.260 align:middle line:84%
The chestnuts seem
lit from within,

00:10:49.260 --> 00:10:53.220 align:middle line:84%
almost as if by lamplight,
and burnished to warm leather

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the color of old harnesses.

00:10:56.580 --> 00:11:01.830 align:middle line:84%
I have four bottles, cut glass
cologne bottles, right here

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under my ribs by my heart.

00:11:04.420 --> 00:11:05.970 align:middle line:90%
Can you tell the doctor?

00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:08.280 align:middle line:90%
I can't, he doesn't like me.

00:11:08.280 --> 00:11:11.420 align:middle line:90%


00:11:11.420 --> 00:11:17.465 align:middle line:84%
Scribbled notes, Opus 130,
1st movement, everything--

00:11:17.465 --> 00:11:45.250 align:middle line:90%
[AUDIO OUT]

00:11:45.250 --> 00:11:48.010 align:middle line:84%
--broken open by
the force of feeling

00:11:48.010 --> 00:11:53.380 align:middle line:84%
it contains, tumbling out into
moments of intense punctuation,

00:11:53.380 --> 00:11:58.030 align:middle line:84%
like blazing sumac, goldenrod,
so densely interwoven

00:11:58.030 --> 00:12:00.220 align:middle line:84%
in the field, I
can't keep any of it

00:12:00.220 --> 00:12:03.880 align:middle line:84%
separate for a long,
pattern of cadence spilling

00:12:03.880 --> 00:12:08.740 align:middle line:84%
out forward, then
sensations, like seeing

00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:15.430 align:middle line:84%
in jeweled precision, exact,
wet, and startlingly there,

00:12:15.430 --> 00:12:20.260 align:middle line:84%
oak leaves, and birch,
and exclamations of maple,

00:12:20.260 --> 00:12:24.220 align:middle line:84%
the flecked details
of the piebald world,

00:12:24.220 --> 00:12:28.390 align:middle line:84%
seeing it all, taking it in and
yet, rising up to see at once

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whole forests, is that it,
all my work of listening?

00:12:33.970 --> 00:12:36.790 align:middle line:84%
And have I only learned
that Beethoven could

00:12:36.790 --> 00:12:40.960 align:middle line:90%
see the forest and the trees?

00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:48.220 align:middle line:84%
Bobby cries on the couch,
all I want is one head.

00:12:48.220 --> 00:12:53.560 align:middle line:84%
Later, my head and my
legs are one thing.

00:12:53.560 --> 00:12:55.900 align:middle line:84%
Over breakfast,
please, you've got

00:12:55.900 --> 00:12:59.620 align:middle line:84%
to tell me the truth now
no matter what, swear--

00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:03.220 align:middle line:84%
the boxes, do they
ever hold still?

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They're driving me crazy
with their dancing.

00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:11.440 align:middle line:84%
Mostly, he looks
away, mouth open,

00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:14.590 align:middle line:84%
as if studying
something slightly above

00:13:14.590 --> 00:13:16.345 align:middle line:90%
and to the right of the world.

00:13:16.345 --> 00:13:19.770 align:middle line:90%


00:13:19.770 --> 00:13:23.720 align:middle line:84%
The music is like lying down
in that light which gleams out

00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:27.650 align:middle line:84%
of chestnuts, the glow of
oil than rubbed mahogany,

00:13:27.650 --> 00:13:31.130 align:middle line:84%
of burled walnut,
bird's-eye maple polished

00:13:31.130 --> 00:13:35.030 align:middle line:84%
into incandescence, autumn's
essence of brass and rosin,

00:13:35.030 --> 00:13:39.920 align:middle line:84%
bronze and apples, the
evanescence, brisk smoke.

00:13:39.920 --> 00:13:44.900 align:middle line:84%
But how is a quartet,
abstract thing,

00:13:44.900 --> 00:13:51.590 align:middle line:84%
passionate, autumnal, fitful,
gleaming, regretful, hesitant,

00:13:51.590 --> 00:13:54.740 align:middle line:90%
authoritative, true?

00:13:54.740 --> 00:13:58.670 align:middle line:84%
Is any listening an
act of translation,

00:13:58.670 --> 00:14:05.840 align:middle line:84%
a shift of language, even the
music words themselves may make?

00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:10.400 align:middle line:84%
A flutter of pendant
birch leaves.

00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:13.700 align:middle line:84%
Then I pull myself
back from the place

00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:16.430 align:middle line:90%
where the music has brought me.

00:14:16.430 --> 00:14:21.050 align:middle line:84%
The music is not leaves,
music is not Bobby's illness.

00:14:21.050 --> 00:14:27.200 align:middle line:84%
Music, itself, is always
structure, redolent suggestive

00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:31.670 align:middle line:84%
occasion, a sort of
scaffold which supports

00:14:31.670 --> 00:14:35.840 align:middle line:90%
the branching of attention.

00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:39.260 align:middle line:84%
After the flood of
detail, the quartet

00:14:39.260 --> 00:14:45.080 align:middle line:84%
conjures nothing, the
great block of silence

00:14:45.080 --> 00:14:50.030 align:middle line:84%
which the fugue has
defined around itself.

00:14:50.030 --> 00:14:56.510 align:middle line:84%
When I was 17 and everyone I
knew acquired a new vocabulary--

00:14:56.510 --> 00:15:00.410 align:middle line:90%
mantra, sutra, Upanishad--

00:15:00.410 --> 00:15:07.610 align:middle line:84%
I learned the chant in
Sanskrit, gate gate paragate,

00:15:07.610 --> 00:15:10.310 align:middle line:84%
is all I can remember
of the words.

00:15:10.310 --> 00:15:15.560 align:middle line:84%
But the translation goes
'gone, gone, beyond gone,

00:15:15.560 --> 00:15:18.290 align:middle line:90%
altogether beyond gone.'

00:15:18.290 --> 00:15:21.200 align:middle line:84%
And that is where
the music has gone,

00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:29.060 align:middle line:84%
and Bobby's going, though
not today, not yet.

00:15:29.060 --> 00:15:32.540 align:middle line:90%
AZT is a toxic, limited miracle.

00:15:32.540 --> 00:15:36.230 align:middle line:84%
And Bobby's in the kitchen
banging the tea kettle,

00:15:36.230 --> 00:15:41.480 align:middle line:84%
cursing the oatmeal, the first
time he's been up in weeks.

00:15:41.480 --> 00:15:45.440 align:middle line:84%
Last night, when a Supremes
song graced the radio,

00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.920 align:middle line:84%
he suddenly rose,
coiffed in his blanket,

00:15:48.920 --> 00:15:54.920 align:middle line:84%
and lip synced two seconds of
blessed, familiar drag routine.

00:15:54.920 --> 00:15:59.270 align:middle line:84%
He's well enough to be a bitch,
to want a haircut and a shave,

00:15:59.270 --> 00:16:03.530 align:middle line:84%
still too sick to go home,
wherever that might be,

00:16:03.530 --> 00:16:07.730 align:middle line:90%
and to ill, as well, to stay.

00:16:07.730 --> 00:16:12.440 align:middle line:84%
The truth is, we can't live
in such radical proximity

00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:17.360 align:middle line:90%
to his dying, but not today.

00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:24.920 align:middle line:84%
In the wet black yard, October
lilacs, misplaced fever,

00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:28.430 align:middle line:84%
false flowering into
the absence the storm

00:16:28.430 --> 00:16:32.930 align:middle line:84%
supplied, flower of the
world's beautiful will

00:16:32.930 --> 00:16:38.000 align:middle line:84%
to fill, fill space,
always to take up space,

00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:45.020 align:middle line:84%
hold a place for the possible, a
little flourish of false spring.

00:16:45.020 --> 00:16:50.870 align:middle line:84%
What can I do but echo
myself, vary, and repeat?

00:16:50.870 --> 00:16:53.210 align:middle line:90%
Where can the poem end?

00:16:53.210 --> 00:16:56.120 align:middle line:84%
What can you expect
in a world that

00:16:56.120 --> 00:16:59.270 align:middle line:90%
blooms and freezes all at once?

00:16:59.270 --> 00:17:01.730 align:middle line:84%
There is no resolution
in the fugue."

00:17:01.730 --> 00:17:05.930 align:middle line:90%


00:17:05.930 --> 00:17:07.480 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:17:07.480 --> 00:17:15.000 align:middle line:90%