WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.030 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.030 --> 00:00:03.280 align:middle line:84% From her home in Northern Ireland, 00:00:03.280 --> 00:00:09.340 align:middle line:84% this event is part of a statewide festival called 00:00:09.340 --> 00:00:12.670 align:middle line:90% Arizona Salutes British Arts. 00:00:12.670 --> 00:00:16.600 align:middle line:84% We are a bit more sanguine about that association 00:00:16.600 --> 00:00:20.290 align:middle line:84% since there has been a peace in Northern Ireland 00:00:20.290 --> 00:00:23.440 align:middle line:90% since we planned this reading. 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:25.300 align:middle line:84% Medbh McGuckian was born in Belfast, 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:28.250 align:middle line:84% where she now lives with her husband and four children. 00:00:28.250 --> 00:00:31.900 align:middle line:84% She received a BA and MA degrees from Queen's University 00:00:31.900 --> 00:00:34.780 align:middle line:84% in Belfast, where she was also the first woman 00:00:34.780 --> 00:00:37.420 align:middle line:90% to be named writer in residence. 00:00:37.420 --> 00:00:40.210 align:middle line:84% She's the author of four books of poetry, 00:00:40.210 --> 00:00:46.240 align:middle line:84% The Flower Master, Venus and the Rain, On Ballycastle Beach, 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:50.920 align:middle line:84% and most recently, Marconi's Cottage. 00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:54.100 align:middle line:84% In a recent review that was published, 00:00:54.100 --> 00:00:58.690 align:middle line:84% her work was compared to both Emily Dickinson and John 00:00:58.690 --> 00:01:04.870 align:middle line:84% Ashbery, an odd fusion of influences one might think. 00:01:04.870 --> 00:01:08.140 align:middle line:84% I scratched my head many times and went back and back 00:01:08.140 --> 00:01:13.810 align:middle line:84% to her poems, and finally said yes, McGuckian's poems 00:01:13.810 --> 00:01:19.120 align:middle line:84% do share the immediate and shape shifting energy of Ashbery, 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:24.190 align:middle line:84% along with the quirky interior sense of spiritual urgency 00:01:24.190 --> 00:01:26.650 align:middle line:90% one finds in Emily Dickinson. 00:01:26.650 --> 00:01:29.090 align:middle line:84% It's truly an honor to have her with us. 00:01:29.090 --> 00:01:31.451 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Medbh McGuckian. 00:01:31.451 --> 00:01:34.818 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:34.818 --> 00:01:39.640 align:middle line:90% 00:01:39.640 --> 00:01:42.010 align:middle line:90% After many vicissitudes-- 00:01:42.010 --> 00:01:44.050 align:middle line:90% I love that word-- 00:01:44.050 --> 00:01:44.800 align:middle line:90% I'm here. 00:01:44.800 --> 00:01:47.350 align:middle line:90% And I'm very happy to be here. 00:01:47.350 --> 00:01:51.340 align:middle line:84% Believe me, I'm very happy to be here. 00:01:51.340 --> 00:01:54.850 align:middle line:84% So I hope we are celebrating the peace. 00:01:54.850 --> 00:01:58.990 align:middle line:90% And I begin with some-- 00:01:58.990 --> 00:02:00.820 align:middle line:90% I have lost my-- 00:02:00.820 --> 00:02:03.160 align:middle line:84% OK, I begin with some early poems, 00:02:03.160 --> 00:02:10.990 align:middle line:84% which for some reason being in Arizona, a couple of early poems 00:02:10.990 --> 00:02:14.170 align:middle line:84% I had seemed to fit with the landscape 00:02:14.170 --> 00:02:16.090 align:middle line:90% that I'm suddenly plunged into. 00:02:16.090 --> 00:02:22.120 align:middle line:84% Very amazing moonscape of a landscape that I'm in. 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:26.530 align:middle line:84% And it's very much more beautiful 00:02:26.530 --> 00:02:28.460 align:middle line:90% than I had imagined here. 00:02:28.460 --> 00:02:31.760 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem I wrote a long time ago. 00:02:31.760 --> 00:02:40.090 align:middle line:84% And just the kind of vegetation in it, 00:02:40.090 --> 00:02:48.040 align:middle line:84% and just the kind of stage managing going on in the poem 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:51.820 align:middle line:84% reminds me just of being here in Arizona. 00:02:51.820 --> 00:02:53.830 align:middle line:84% So don't worry about what it means, 00:02:53.830 --> 00:02:57.120 align:middle line:90% just accept that it's something. 00:02:57.120 --> 00:02:58.900 align:middle line:84% It's probably something to do with sex. 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:02.770 align:middle line:84% But you can work in as you go along. 00:03:02.770 --> 00:03:06.670 align:middle line:84% Anyway, really, it's just about my inner world, 00:03:06.670 --> 00:03:10.960 align:middle line:84% and this was how I felt. So it's called "Story County," 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:16.480 align:middle line:84% and I'm dedicating it to the state of Arizona. 00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:21.670 align:middle line:84% "Loose strife will not soothe the thirst of tall grass. 00:03:21.670 --> 00:03:24.550 align:middle line:84% Migrating with the luminous speed, 00:03:24.550 --> 00:03:28.300 align:middle line:84% the gay feather adds to the Indian pony. 00:03:28.300 --> 00:03:31.540 align:middle line:84% The seried steps of the sidewinder. 00:03:31.540 --> 00:03:34.910 align:middle line:90% The flavor of the garter snake. 00:03:34.910 --> 00:03:38.170 align:middle line:84% Its early blush is green and warm. 00:03:38.170 --> 00:03:41.590 align:middle line:84% It coarsens with the summer, till the cows 00:03:41.590 --> 00:03:45.100 align:middle line:84% are lost like the toad's voice, or the crocodile 00:03:45.100 --> 00:03:47.290 align:middle line:90% in the jaws of family life. 00:03:47.290 --> 00:03:50.530 align:middle line:90% The smokescreen of religion. 00:03:50.530 --> 00:03:55.300 align:middle line:84% The meadowlarks sing in the spurs of prairie roses. 00:03:55.300 --> 00:04:01.240 align:middle line:84% Wine red fields of blue stem do what the wind says. 00:04:01.240 --> 00:04:06.130 align:middle line:84% Like a mermaid wheelchair, I manicure demurely. 00:04:06.130 --> 00:04:11.530 align:middle line:84% Stone houses, rock, maples, timber, birds. 00:04:11.530 --> 00:04:15.670 align:middle line:84% The wooden country soil is a varnished sheen. 00:04:15.670 --> 00:04:19.959 align:middle line:84% I'm done with pumping water in Story County. 00:04:19.959 --> 00:04:23.380 align:middle line:84% Breeding tangle legs and self-heal. 00:04:23.380 --> 00:04:29.510 align:middle line:84% Hawkweed and bluets, also known as Quaker's ladies, innocence." 00:04:29.510 --> 00:04:33.310 align:middle line:90% 00:04:33.310 --> 00:04:37.930 align:middle line:84% Totally opposite to go back to my own country, 00:04:37.930 --> 00:04:42.340 align:middle line:84% and to go back into Ireland, and give you 00:04:42.340 --> 00:04:46.300 align:middle line:90% some idea of Ireland's history. 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:51.520 align:middle line:84% And we were talking last night about hot toddies, 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:55.120 align:middle line:84% and actually some people were drinking hot toddies. 00:04:55.120 --> 00:05:02.980 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem dedicated to the hot toddy, I suppose, 00:05:02.980 --> 00:05:05.210 align:middle line:90% and to all that side of things. 00:05:05.210 --> 00:05:08.620 align:middle line:84% So it's an Irish poem, and it's called "The Cure," 00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:12.220 align:middle line:84% which is a euphemism for whiskey. 00:05:12.220 --> 00:05:14.590 align:middle line:84% And boy could you do that sometimes. 00:05:14.590 --> 00:05:16.840 align:middle line:90% So it's called "The Cure." 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:19.540 align:middle line:84% And again, it's an early poem, so you must forgive 00:05:19.540 --> 00:05:23.050 align:middle line:90% some of the extravagances. 00:05:23.050 --> 00:05:26.620 align:middle line:84% "What is more beautiful than potatoes in bloom? 00:05:26.620 --> 00:05:30.790 align:middle line:84% A redhead swinging poitín from her breasts. 00:05:30.790 --> 00:05:35.200 align:middle line:84% A smuggler from the cradle, with no character to lose. 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:38.140 align:middle line:90% She gives no dry bargains. 00:05:38.140 --> 00:05:41.410 align:middle line:90% She's the doe in the still. 00:05:41.410 --> 00:05:46.420 align:middle line:84% Grain sprouts under the bed, steeps in the false gable 00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:50.870 align:middle line:84% to keep red Willy's tongue as rough as corduroy. 00:05:50.870 --> 00:05:53.380 align:middle line:84% It would make a rabbit spit at a dog 00:05:53.380 --> 00:05:58.420 align:middle line:84% to see it swallowed by hat makers and French polishers. 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:02.860 align:middle line:84% Once a man gets land, he loses his thirst. 00:06:02.860 --> 00:06:04.840 align:middle line:90% They should have been canonized. 00:06:04.840 --> 00:06:07.330 align:middle line:90% Who sprayed water on the worm? 00:06:07.330 --> 00:06:09.940 align:middle line:90% Vapor, kettles, nipple. 00:06:09.940 --> 00:06:13.570 align:middle line:84% In the Diocese of Derry, it's a reserved sin." 00:06:13.570 --> 00:06:17.540 align:middle line:90% 00:06:17.540 --> 00:06:21.740 align:middle line:90% Speaking of sin, what do we see? 00:06:21.740 --> 00:06:24.920 align:middle line:84% Do we ever speak of anything else, I wonder? 00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:27.740 align:middle line:84% I have been talking about sin all day today. 00:06:27.740 --> 00:06:32.450 align:middle line:84% And this is one dedicated to Trevor Weekes, who was my host 00:06:32.450 --> 00:06:35.270 align:middle line:90% last night and very genial. 00:06:35.270 --> 00:06:42.110 align:middle line:84% And it's about stargazing, and he's an astronomer. 00:06:42.110 --> 00:06:46.880 align:middle line:84% And it really was dedicated originally 00:06:46.880 --> 00:06:52.340 align:middle line:84% to my sister, who also is an astronomer. 00:06:52.340 --> 00:06:53.750 align:middle line:90% So it's called "Magazines." 00:06:53.750 --> 00:06:56.540 align:middle line:84% And again, as with a lot of my poems, 00:06:56.540 --> 00:07:02.900 align:middle line:84% the titles would play on the two meanings of that. 00:07:02.900 --> 00:07:07.490 align:middle line:84% Because magazines as glossy magazines, 00:07:07.490 --> 00:07:15.110 align:middle line:84% fashion magazines but also powder kegs, or building up 00:07:15.110 --> 00:07:18.980 align:middle line:84% of explosives, which was what was happening 00:07:18.980 --> 00:07:21.080 align:middle line:90% in the country at the time. 00:07:21.080 --> 00:07:25.410 align:middle line:84% See, it was a very explosive situation. 00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:29.510 align:middle line:84% So it's a very explosive poem, really-- 00:07:29.510 --> 00:07:31.790 align:middle line:90% "Magazines." 00:07:31.790 --> 00:07:33.950 align:middle line:90% "The sun is quiet. 00:07:33.950 --> 00:07:36.980 align:middle line:84% It's so dark, the women in their houses 00:07:36.980 --> 00:07:39.620 align:middle line:90% keep the lights on all day. 00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:43.430 align:middle line:90% Their heated germs unwinding. 00:07:43.430 --> 00:07:46.370 align:middle line:84% They do not worry about water running out 00:07:46.370 --> 00:07:49.550 align:middle line:84% in the fringes of their appley beds. 00:07:49.550 --> 00:07:55.250 align:middle line:84% They are deep sky observing with their eye cups, Ju cups, 00:07:55.250 --> 00:08:00.230 align:middle line:84% curved spiders, the software of cosmic time. 00:08:00.230 --> 00:08:03.950 align:middle line:84% In the hall, a bronze sculpture of Saturn, 00:08:03.950 --> 00:08:07.940 align:middle line:84% sunrise taken at the moon's straight wall. 00:08:07.940 --> 00:08:11.450 align:middle line:84% Glossy blow ups of a lunar earth rise. 00:08:11.450 --> 00:08:16.430 align:middle line:84% A talkative Martian sunset, while this week's star 00:08:16.430 --> 00:08:21.440 align:middle line:84% Atlas muscles Keiron in as Pluto's hanging plant. 00:08:21.440 --> 00:08:25.130 align:middle line:84% Scrapbooks pile with jetty slides. 00:08:25.130 --> 00:08:30.380 align:middle line:84% The powder room at the country and western dance." 00:08:30.380 --> 00:08:35.659 align:middle line:84% And finally from this early bunch, an Indian poem. 00:08:35.659 --> 00:08:38.480 align:middle line:90% 00:08:38.480 --> 00:08:41.630 align:middle line:84% We went to an Indian reservation yesterday, 00:08:41.630 --> 00:08:47.510 align:middle line:84% and I was very moved by the poverty and the beauty of it. 00:08:47.510 --> 00:08:51.620 align:middle line:84% And this is just sort of a pastiche of Paul Muldoon, who's 00:08:51.620 --> 00:08:56.060 align:middle line:84% always nattering on about Indians in a very 00:08:56.060 --> 00:08:57.500 align:middle line:90% patronizing way. 00:08:57.500 --> 00:08:58.740 align:middle line:90% But don't repeat that. 00:08:58.740 --> 00:09:01.880 align:middle line:90% But this is equally patronizing. 00:09:01.880 --> 00:09:03.860 align:middle line:90% But this is the woman. 00:09:03.860 --> 00:09:06.380 align:middle line:84% And it's, again, I suppose about sexuality. 00:09:06.380 --> 00:09:08.420 align:middle line:84% But it has a double edged title, again, 00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:12.740 align:middle line:84% because it's called "Pemmican," which is the paste, 00:09:12.740 --> 00:09:17.810 align:middle line:90% or the cakes, that Indians-- 00:09:17.810 --> 00:09:23.630 align:middle line:84% it's a name of Indian food, but it's also an emergency food 00:09:23.630 --> 00:09:28.460 align:middle line:84% supply, which again at the time, there 00:09:28.460 --> 00:09:31.760 align:middle line:84% was all sorts of strikes and goings on in our country. 00:09:31.760 --> 00:09:37.550 align:middle line:84% And people were constantly filling their cupboards 00:09:37.550 --> 00:09:40.460 align:middle line:84% with tinned foods for the strikes. 00:09:40.460 --> 00:09:42.570 align:middle line:84% I mean, I just remember doing that. 00:09:42.570 --> 00:09:44.570 align:middle line:84% And people were even doing that last-- 00:09:44.570 --> 00:09:46.010 align:middle line:90% when the ceasefire happened. 00:09:46.010 --> 00:09:49.220 align:middle line:84% The Protestants were going out filling their cupboards 00:09:49.220 --> 00:09:55.080 align:middle line:84% with tins, food for the nuclear war that was going to happen. 00:09:55.080 --> 00:10:01.070 align:middle line:84% And so as a result, the people lived off these tin foods 00:10:01.070 --> 00:10:02.490 align:middle line:90% for a long time. 00:10:02.490 --> 00:10:05.960 align:middle line:84% So anyway the title called "Pemmican." 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:12.320 align:middle line:84% And it's just a tribute to being here. 00:10:12.320 --> 00:10:14.240 align:middle line:84% They know nothing about the place really, 00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:18.110 align:middle line:90% but neither does Paul anyway. 00:10:18.110 --> 00:10:21.110 align:middle line:90% "The buffalo in rut is a bull. 00:10:21.110 --> 00:10:24.410 align:middle line:84% His skin will make a firewood boat 00:10:24.410 --> 00:10:27.350 align:middle line:90% across the mussel shell river. 00:10:27.350 --> 00:10:31.040 align:middle line:84% The locusts feed on the artemisia shrubs. 00:10:31.040 --> 00:10:34.160 align:middle line:84% The ravens on little distant bear, 00:10:34.160 --> 00:10:36.740 align:middle line:90% dreaming in the cherry tree. 00:10:36.740 --> 00:10:41.840 align:middle line:84% We are his red tipped Osiris, his special one with the feather 00:10:41.840 --> 00:10:42.380 align:middle line:90% tuft. 00:10:42.380 --> 00:10:47.090 align:middle line:84% Wears white cosmetics, wormwood on her fingers. 00:10:47.090 --> 00:10:52.340 align:middle line:84% In the bison dance, we swing claw necklaces and eagle fans. 00:10:52.340 --> 00:10:57.800 align:middle line:84% The hourglass is meeting on our blankets." 00:10:57.800 --> 00:11:00.933 align:middle line:84% And this book is all about flowers. 00:11:00.933 --> 00:11:02.600 align:middle line:84% It was supposed to be all about flowers. 00:11:02.600 --> 00:11:07.020 align:middle line:84% But again, it was about something else as well. 00:11:07.020 --> 00:11:09.200 align:middle line:84% And I'll just read one longish poem 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:16.250 align:middle line:84% in it, which is all about flowers, 00:11:16.250 --> 00:11:17.960 align:middle line:84% and just different kinds of flowers, 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:23.240 align:middle line:84% and different kinds of moods, and different kinds of states, 00:11:23.240 --> 00:11:24.800 align:middle line:90% and everything else. 00:11:24.800 --> 00:11:31.250 align:middle line:84% So it's in four sections and called "The Orchid House," 00:11:31.250 --> 00:11:32.360 align:middle line:90% Part 1. 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:37.160 align:middle line:84% "A flower's fragrance is a woman's virtue. 00:11:37.160 --> 00:11:41.660 align:middle line:84% So I tell them underground in pairs 00:11:41.660 --> 00:11:44.090 align:middle line:84% or in their fleshy white sleeves, 00:11:44.090 --> 00:11:46.640 align:middle line:90% how desirable their shapes. 00:11:46.640 --> 00:11:52.130 align:middle line:84% How one was lost for 60 years with all its arching spikes, 00:11:52.130 --> 00:11:54.830 align:middle line:90% its honeyed tessellations. 00:11:54.830 --> 00:11:58.550 align:middle line:84% And how in bloom, they will resemble moths, 00:11:58.550 --> 00:12:00.170 align:middle line:90% the gloss of mirrors. 00:12:00.170 --> 00:12:05.930 align:middle line:84% Christmas stars, their helmets blushing red-brown when they 00:12:05.930 --> 00:12:07.730 align:middle line:90% marry." 00:12:07.730 --> 00:12:12.710 align:middle line:84% Part 2-- "In my alpine house, the slavery I 00:12:12.710 --> 00:12:17.780 align:middle line:84% pay my willful gentians, exploring all their pleats 00:12:17.780 --> 00:12:22.520 align:middle line:84% and tucks as though they had something precious deep inside 00:12:22.520 --> 00:12:26.270 align:middle line:84% that beard of camel hair, in the throat. 00:12:26.270 --> 00:12:30.800 align:middle line:84% Touch them, ease their hand so slowly through their thumb hole 00:12:30.800 --> 00:12:35.690 align:middle line:84% necklines, till they sit like tailors in their Earth shoes, 00:12:35.690 --> 00:12:38.930 align:middle line:90% their watery husbands' knots. 00:12:38.930 --> 00:12:43.670 align:middle line:84% No insects visit them, nor do their ovaries swell. 00:12:43.670 --> 00:12:48.590 align:middle line:84% Yet every night in Tibet, their seeds are membraned by the snow. 00:12:48.590 --> 00:12:52.790 align:middle line:84% Their roots are bathed by the passage of mouth water. 00:12:52.790 --> 00:12:56.090 align:middle line:84% They tease like sullen spinsters. 00:12:56.090 --> 00:12:59.750 align:middle line:90% The dew fall of summer limes." 00:12:59.750 --> 00:13:05.570 align:middle line:84% Three-- "The disdain of green summer cloud on our glasshouses 00:13:05.570 --> 00:13:09.560 align:middle line:84% has bred out the tomatoes coat of hair. 00:13:09.560 --> 00:13:14.030 align:middle line:84% And flowers yield themselves less foolishly than deer 00:13:14.030 --> 00:13:19.130 align:middle line:84% that fan their cologne with the affluence of flattened tears. 00:13:19.130 --> 00:13:23.900 align:middle line:84% They must be harvested at dawn before their permafrost has sunk 00:13:23.900 --> 00:13:27.290 align:middle line:90% beyond a skater's melted world. 00:13:27.290 --> 00:13:32.390 align:middle line:84% Rude as hyacinths circling a private room at night. 00:13:32.390 --> 00:13:36.020 align:middle line:84% To this tall icicle, my geranium oil. 00:13:36.020 --> 00:13:40.700 align:middle line:84% The spills of my patchoulied shawl." 00:13:40.700 --> 00:13:43.490 align:middle line:90% And the last one-- 00:13:43.490 --> 00:13:46.910 align:middle line:84% "The begonia's soil is rich and wet. 00:13:46.910 --> 00:13:51.230 align:middle line:84% I tuck it in around her, as I would pat my hair, 00:13:51.230 --> 00:13:54.380 align:middle line:90% straightening her tubered root. 00:13:54.380 --> 00:13:56.750 align:middle line:90% We keep our sources secret. 00:13:56.750 --> 00:14:00.590 align:middle line:84% She swells with lymph and electricity. 00:14:00.590 --> 00:14:04.550 align:middle line:84% Her fibers transparently taped up. 00:14:04.550 --> 00:14:08.075 align:middle line:84% And I sprout willowy as any sweet begonia." 00:14:08.075 --> 00:14:13.100 align:middle line:90% 00:14:13.100 --> 00:14:21.080 align:middle line:84% The last book was kind of a preparation for death 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:24.740 align:middle line:90% and a preparation for birth. 00:14:24.740 --> 00:14:30.110 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I think they're not that distinguishable. 00:14:30.110 --> 00:14:33.890 align:middle line:90% And an early poem in this-- 00:14:33.890 --> 00:14:36.710 align:middle line:84% my father had been ill for some time. 00:14:36.710 --> 00:14:38.900 align:middle line:84% And it seems as if I was ill also. 00:14:38.900 --> 00:14:41.900 align:middle line:84% I mean, he couldn't be ill without me being ill. 00:14:41.900 --> 00:14:46.040 align:middle line:84% And so I mean, the sicker he got, the sicker I got. 00:14:46.040 --> 00:14:49.760 align:middle line:84% Of course, he had to sort of look after me far more 00:14:49.760 --> 00:14:51.770 align:middle line:84% than he was able to look after himself. 00:14:51.770 --> 00:14:54.690 align:middle line:84% And I never bothered looking after him, of course. 00:14:54.690 --> 00:14:57.890 align:middle line:84% So anyway, this is about my father's illness. 00:14:57.890 --> 00:15:00.710 align:middle line:84% And it's an early poem trying to come 00:15:00.710 --> 00:15:08.000 align:middle line:84% to terms with the idea of losing him, never mind the fact of it. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:13.790 align:middle line:84% So it's called "The Invalid's Echo." 00:15:13.790 --> 00:15:18.830 align:middle line:84% "It was as if he put a thermometer back in its holder 00:15:18.830 --> 00:15:24.620 align:middle line:84% without shaking it, or snatched a cigarette out of my mouth, 00:15:24.620 --> 00:15:26.660 align:middle line:90% like a secret breath. 00:15:26.660 --> 00:15:33.080 align:middle line:84% The way he put his finger on the rest, and we were disconnected. 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:38.150 align:middle line:84% The thinnest paper was an unblue that had summoned him. 00:15:38.150 --> 00:15:40.640 align:middle line:90% It took five calls. 00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:45.380 align:middle line:84% Sitting behind a desk, waking him prematurely, 00:15:45.380 --> 00:15:50.330 align:middle line:84% as a parent poem, out of an unfrightened 10 year 00:15:50.330 --> 00:15:55.730 align:middle line:84% stretch of love for 20 minutes by an open window. 00:15:55.730 --> 00:15:59.630 align:middle line:84% His foliage was unlike that of any other. 00:15:59.630 --> 00:16:02.690 align:middle line:90% His sound was like nothing else. 00:16:02.690 --> 00:16:05.510 align:middle line:90% My ears were never rested. 00:16:05.510 --> 00:16:10.790 align:middle line:84% I would have spent the rest of my life felling his timber, 00:16:10.790 --> 00:16:14.210 align:middle line:84% never taking my eyes off him, always 00:16:14.210 --> 00:16:20.210 align:middle line:84% looking straight at his mouth if that was how he liked it. 00:16:20.210 --> 00:16:24.350 align:middle line:84% He practices at death with each embrace. 00:16:24.350 --> 00:16:27.230 align:middle line:84% In the language of our grandmothers 00:16:27.230 --> 00:16:30.080 align:middle line:84% who spoke God's name continually, 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:33.380 align:middle line:90% forgotten by our own free will. 00:16:33.380 --> 00:16:38.390 align:middle line:84% He says a prayer for the dying over himself and me. 00:16:38.390 --> 00:16:43.640 align:middle line:84% His endearments execute the house's deepest reds. 00:16:43.640 --> 00:16:47.250 align:middle line:90% A house heals easily. 00:16:47.250 --> 00:16:51.290 align:middle line:84% Bloodshed in the past loses its hue. 00:16:51.290 --> 00:16:56.780 align:middle line:84% If I could die the same death in the same air as him, 00:16:56.780 --> 00:17:03.170 align:middle line:84% I would wish my grave untended to, like everybody else's. 00:17:03.170 --> 00:17:06.109 align:middle line:84% Like the bulb that has not been washed 00:17:06.109 --> 00:17:10.190 align:middle line:84% since the revolution, the hole in the ceiling that 00:17:10.190 --> 00:17:14.900 align:middle line:84% has left a little pile of plaster on the floor. 00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:18.230 align:middle line:84% I think his family is so ancient. 00:17:18.230 --> 00:17:22.280 align:middle line:84% His heart must still be over on the right, though I 00:17:22.280 --> 00:17:26.119 align:middle line:84% have searched for it before in full swing 00:17:26.119 --> 00:17:30.770 align:middle line:84% until it shrank to nothing, merging with my name that 00:17:30.770 --> 00:17:33.770 align:middle line:84% comes from nowhere and is owner less, 00:17:33.770 --> 00:17:37.460 align:middle line:84% like all we can see of the stars. 00:17:37.460 --> 00:17:41.480 align:middle line:84% Now, like them, I lie with my bottom. 00:17:41.480 --> 00:17:45.080 align:middle line:84% His chance neighbor, watching the entrance 00:17:45.080 --> 00:17:48.200 align:middle line:90% to the house but not the house. 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:52.250 align:middle line:84% The long autumn has scattered its poisonous seeds, 00:17:52.250 --> 00:17:56.030 align:middle line:90% so I will have no October child. 00:17:56.030 --> 00:17:59.180 align:middle line:84% By the time I have the dream that he 00:17:59.180 --> 00:18:02.690 align:middle line:84% will seek the word with his fingers, the word that 00:18:02.690 --> 00:18:05.000 align:middle line:90% can scarcely be used. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:07.490 align:middle line:84% That having forgotten everything, 00:18:07.490 --> 00:18:11.240 align:middle line:84% he will imagine the sky in its second appearance 00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:13.790 align:middle line:90% as the quintessence of blue. 00:18:13.790 --> 00:18:17.780 align:middle line:84% I will be freezing in my short jacket. 00:18:17.780 --> 00:18:21.860 align:middle line:84% In my last dream, it was after January. 00:18:21.860 --> 00:18:26.960 align:middle line:84% I was buying food for him, when a truck I have lost track 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:32.150 align:middle line:84% of, came rattling into the overfull-filled courtyard." 00:18:32.150 --> 00:18:35.630 align:middle line:90% 00:18:35.630 --> 00:18:41.390 align:middle line:84% And to balance that-- one must always balance these things-- 00:18:41.390 --> 00:18:44.600 align:middle line:90% one about my mother. 00:18:44.600 --> 00:18:49.130 align:middle line:84% I've never written a half decent poem about my mother 00:18:49.130 --> 00:18:51.300 align:middle line:90% because I don't know. 00:18:51.300 --> 00:18:52.710 align:middle line:90% It's just one of those things. 00:18:52.710 --> 00:19:00.080 align:middle line:84% But this one is I guess is a jealousy poem and lots 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:01.520 align:middle line:90% of Freudian things in it. 00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:04.610 align:middle line:84% But it's called "Flowered Sitting-room." 00:19:04.610 --> 00:19:07.280 align:middle line:84% And I dedicated it to Ann Weekes. 00:19:07.280 --> 00:19:10.400 align:middle line:84% We cheered ourselves up immensely 00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:13.310 align:middle line:84% talking about our mothers for the last couple of days. 00:19:13.310 --> 00:19:18.080 align:middle line:84% So it's dedicated to Ann and to her mother. 00:19:18.080 --> 00:19:23.090 align:middle line:84% And both of our mothers are in this situation. 00:19:23.090 --> 00:19:25.340 align:middle line:84% They probably had these very dynamic husbands, 00:19:25.340 --> 00:19:29.330 align:middle line:84% who wore themselves out and abandoned them early on. 00:19:29.330 --> 00:19:30.980 align:middle line:90% So they're left with memories. 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:33.980 align:middle line:84% And they're left sitting in a room. 00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:39.410 align:middle line:84% And the room is their world, really. 00:19:39.410 --> 00:19:43.550 align:middle line:84% And it was particularly my father's world 00:19:43.550 --> 00:19:47.120 align:middle line:84% because my mother had him totally under her thumb. 00:19:47.120 --> 00:19:51.530 align:middle line:84% And she would say, now, redecorate this room for me. 00:19:51.530 --> 00:19:55.520 align:middle line:84% And the room would be redecorated every year. 00:19:55.520 --> 00:19:58.310 align:middle line:84% And it always looked exactly the same, 00:19:58.310 --> 00:20:02.840 align:middle line:84% but my father would have to spend days and days staggering 00:20:02.840 --> 00:20:06.020 align:middle line:84% up and down, a labor of love for her. 00:20:06.020 --> 00:20:12.350 align:middle line:84% And now that he's not there, the room hasn't been decorated. 00:20:12.350 --> 00:20:14.900 align:middle line:84% So it's a poem called "Flowered Sitting-room." 00:20:14.900 --> 00:20:16.580 align:middle line:84% And the flowered sitting room is, 00:20:16.580 --> 00:20:18.680 align:middle line:84% my mother is a flowered sitting room, 00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:24.740 align:middle line:84% as far as I'm concerned and more like a Sitting Bull, sorry. 00:20:24.740 --> 00:20:26.390 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:20:26.390 --> 00:20:31.250 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so tribute to my mother here. 00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:33.100 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:20:33.100 --> 00:20:36.170 align:middle line:84% No, she's quite sweet, in an attempt at sweetness. 00:20:36.170 --> 00:20:36.670 align:middle line:90% Anyway-- 00:20:36.670 --> 00:20:39.200 align:middle line:90% 00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:44.180 align:middle line:84% "Your low roofed, half kitchen, half parlor, 00:20:44.180 --> 00:20:48.770 align:middle line:84% old type of motherhood loses the sun. 00:20:48.770 --> 00:20:55.820 align:middle line:84% Two fields from the house, your Snow White companion, morning, 00:20:55.820 --> 00:21:01.670 align:middle line:84% makes the land more silent than if we had never heard of him. 00:21:01.670 --> 00:21:04.790 align:middle line:84% You touch one of his bitten apples 00:21:04.790 --> 00:21:09.500 align:middle line:84% with your lips not soft, almost without thinking 00:21:09.500 --> 00:21:13.250 align:middle line:84% of the first signs of winter breaking up. 00:21:13.250 --> 00:21:16.640 align:middle line:84% In your heart's heart, this is your world 00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:20.690 align:middle line:84% for the moment, daily, before your eyes, 00:21:20.690 --> 00:21:24.170 align:middle line:90% for three short long months. 00:21:24.170 --> 00:21:27.950 align:middle line:84% A flower that looks thick, round, and double 00:21:27.950 --> 00:21:30.680 align:middle line:90% faces a gradual death. 00:21:30.680 --> 00:21:35.030 align:middle line:84% But what is your experience of the flower, 00:21:35.030 --> 00:21:41.090 align:middle line:84% if not a vision so absolutely untransferable that when early 00:21:41.090 --> 00:21:46.580 align:middle line:84% summer, now our new neighbor, colors his evening kiss with 00:21:46.580 --> 00:21:53.146 align:middle line:84% your resting place, you see, in him, the impersonation of me." 00:21:53.146 --> 00:21:57.470 align:middle line:90% 00:21:57.470 --> 00:22:01.280 align:middle line:84% So I'll go on to some more recent poems. 00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:04.370 align:middle line:90% And this is one-- 00:22:04.370 --> 00:22:08.120 align:middle line:84% my father had been dead a year when I wrote this. 00:22:08.120 --> 00:22:13.760 align:middle line:84% And it's a kind of reminiscence of his birth. 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:17.900 align:middle line:84% Oh sorry, not of his birth, of his death, of his death birth. 00:22:17.900 --> 00:22:21.710 align:middle line:84% And it's not as harrowing as the other one 00:22:21.710 --> 00:22:22.778 align:middle line:90% that I was going to read. 00:22:22.778 --> 00:22:24.570 align:middle line:84% And I don't think I can read the other one. 00:22:24.570 --> 00:22:29.190 align:middle line:84% So this is one where I'd sort of come to terms with it. 00:22:29.190 --> 00:22:34.070 align:middle line:84% So I hope it's not as depressing as it sounds. 00:22:34.070 --> 00:22:39.140 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Nearness of the Grape Arbour to the Fruit 00:22:39.140 --> 00:22:41.120 align:middle line:90% Cellar." 00:22:41.120 --> 00:22:44.930 align:middle line:84% I better say that again, so you can think about it, 00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:49.190 align:middle line:84% "The Nearness of the Grape Arbour to the Fruit Cellar." 00:22:49.190 --> 00:22:54.260 align:middle line:90% That's C-E-L-L-A-R. 00:22:54.260 --> 00:22:57.170 align:middle line:84% "Like an open prayer against the body, 00:22:57.170 --> 00:23:01.400 align:middle line:84% two roads cross exactly on that corner. 00:23:01.400 --> 00:23:07.280 align:middle line:84% So it seems like an end but is not, as marriage is not. 00:23:07.280 --> 00:23:11.570 align:middle line:84% He was not a country, but the material out of which countries 00:23:11.570 --> 00:23:13.080 align:middle line:90% are made. 00:23:13.080 --> 00:23:17.420 align:middle line:84% He was lying in long, loose waves of broken land. 00:23:17.420 --> 00:23:23.330 align:middle line:84% I had never seen any blood so bright, so frozen, hard enough 00:23:23.330 --> 00:23:25.490 align:middle line:90% not to smell. 00:23:25.490 --> 00:23:29.220 align:middle line:84% The gash was torn from inside outward. 00:23:29.220 --> 00:23:33.320 align:middle line:84% He felt his way through lilacs, trickling them 00:23:33.320 --> 00:23:37.520 align:middle line:84% through his fingers as if he were separating hair, 00:23:37.520 --> 00:23:40.850 align:middle line:90% its mere shadings in grass. 00:23:40.850 --> 00:23:44.060 align:middle line:84% His features might have been cut out of a shell. 00:23:44.060 --> 00:23:46.370 align:middle line:90% They were so transparent. 00:23:46.370 --> 00:23:49.610 align:middle line:84% His chest, like a young blacksmith's, 00:23:49.610 --> 00:23:54.110 align:middle line:84% arched his shoulders, now brown and in seed. 00:23:54.110 --> 00:23:58.040 align:middle line:84% So the country seemed to lift itself up to me 00:23:58.040 --> 00:24:01.250 align:middle line:84% and come near, with the dried stalks, 00:24:01.250 --> 00:24:04.680 align:middle line:90% the dead stand of last year. 00:24:04.680 --> 00:24:07.970 align:middle line:84% His hands burned red, looked calm, 00:24:07.970 --> 00:24:11.440 align:middle line:84% but blazed with the things he could not say, 00:24:11.440 --> 00:24:17.470 align:middle line:84% the other side of the pattern that is supposed not to count. 00:24:17.470 --> 00:24:22.570 align:middle line:84% His Earth owl eyes warmed the guttered slope of my back 00:24:22.570 --> 00:24:24.640 align:middle line:90% with our swift fires. 00:24:24.640 --> 00:24:29.110 align:middle line:84% Such vivid pictures, they might have been his memories 00:24:29.110 --> 00:24:33.910 align:middle line:84% but promised new things for living people. 00:24:33.910 --> 00:24:37.690 align:middle line:84% A silence seemed to ooze out of the ground. 00:24:37.690 --> 00:24:42.910 align:middle line:84% He coupled his mellow thunder to it, as a workhorse 00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:44.890 align:middle line:90% to its yoke mate. 00:24:44.890 --> 00:24:48.910 align:middle line:84% As if he knew it was to piece him out and make 00:24:48.910 --> 00:24:51.880 align:middle line:90% a whole creature of him. 00:24:51.880 --> 00:24:54.820 align:middle line:84% So with a pull that brought curling 00:24:54.820 --> 00:25:00.340 align:middle line:84% muscles to the smooth sun warmed hips of the horses, 00:25:00.340 --> 00:25:04.210 align:middle line:84% he cut his bodies from the pool of field dust 00:25:04.210 --> 00:25:09.400 align:middle line:84% that's scarcely larger than the bed that held him. 00:25:09.400 --> 00:25:15.190 align:middle line:84% A sleeve hanging empty, a good tight box that would turn water. 00:25:15.190 --> 00:25:19.600 align:middle line:84% Yet never scattered his beads, nor raised his hands, 00:25:19.600 --> 00:25:21.910 align:middle line:90% except to cross himself. 00:25:21.910 --> 00:25:27.050 align:middle line:84% Till I was left alone with the older voice of a winter, 00:25:27.050 --> 00:25:30.850 align:middle line:84% which lies too long, has overslept, 00:25:30.850 --> 00:25:35.305 align:middle line:84% or early awakened enjoys the deepening gray." 00:25:35.305 --> 00:25:40.930 align:middle line:90% 00:25:40.930 --> 00:25:44.440 align:middle line:84% This one is a strange poem about him. 00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:50.020 align:middle line:84% As the mourning period continued, 00:25:50.020 --> 00:25:53.710 align:middle line:84% I began to see him in all sorts of strange guises 00:25:53.710 --> 00:25:59.320 align:middle line:84% and just wonder who he was, and where he was, and had he 00:25:59.320 --> 00:26:04.000 align:middle line:84% been already reborn as a woman, and all this type of thing. 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:08.800 align:middle line:84% And my mind was sort of off at certain tangents. 00:26:08.800 --> 00:26:12.820 align:middle line:84% And I was asked to write a poem for International Women's Day. 00:26:12.820 --> 00:26:15.730 align:middle line:84% And I felt I should write about a woman, 00:26:15.730 --> 00:26:18.160 align:middle line:84% but I still wanted to write about my father. 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:23.150 align:middle line:84% So I ended up thinking about all those possibilities. 00:26:23.150 --> 00:26:27.460 align:middle line:84% And it's called "Black Virgin," because I was thinking 00:26:27.460 --> 00:26:33.040 align:middle line:84% of the virgin, the black virgin, which is sacred in Spain 00:26:33.040 --> 00:26:35.990 align:middle line:84% and probably around here as well. 00:26:35.990 --> 00:26:42.790 align:middle line:84% So I've tried to visualize this new identity of him. 00:26:42.790 --> 00:26:47.410 align:middle line:84% And probably again, totally crazy poem. 00:26:47.410 --> 00:26:50.230 align:middle line:84% Anyways, it's called "Black Virgin." 00:26:50.230 --> 00:26:57.160 align:middle line:84% "Sea black virgin-- being in love with you is a fine space. 00:26:57.160 --> 00:27:01.870 align:middle line:84% I will never live in your searching wash, your grass 00:27:01.870 --> 00:27:05.980 align:middle line:84% wallpaper, your bewildered, red gardens. 00:27:05.980 --> 00:27:12.040 align:middle line:84% You desire your holy virginity to be admired by angels only. 00:27:12.040 --> 00:27:16.420 align:middle line:84% Such dry self-knowledge, such sheer Englishness, 00:27:16.420 --> 00:27:20.830 align:middle line:84% how could I have mistaken you for my father? 00:27:20.830 --> 00:27:24.580 align:middle line:84% For the old days when there used to be people, 00:27:24.580 --> 00:27:27.760 align:middle line:84% your days have a medieval structure. 00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:31.540 align:middle line:84% Your brief Cistercian night with its night office 00:27:31.540 --> 00:27:33.970 align:middle line:90% has fought sleep always. 00:27:33.970 --> 00:27:38.710 align:middle line:84% For morning, you touch your lower eyelid, deep awake, 00:27:38.710 --> 00:27:40.990 align:middle line:90% healthy and wise, and quiet. 00:27:40.990 --> 00:27:45.040 align:middle line:84% With your eyes clear, what do you do with your eyes? 00:27:45.040 --> 00:27:50.050 align:middle line:84% With your womb already primed with its fern like pattern, 00:27:50.050 --> 00:27:54.550 align:middle line:84% chasteberry, chaste tree, monk's pepper? 00:27:54.550 --> 00:27:57.280 align:middle line:84% If you are a woman, there's no question 00:27:57.280 --> 00:28:02.350 align:middle line:84% of a word like me being able to comprehend the voice that 00:28:02.350 --> 00:28:05.770 align:middle line:84% uttered it, or its sign language lordly 00:28:05.770 --> 00:28:09.160 align:middle line:84% and off balance with the inwardness of war. 00:28:09.160 --> 00:28:14.050 align:middle line:84% Perhaps I am a sound born with you and finished with you. 00:28:14.050 --> 00:28:18.160 align:middle line:84% Your Lenten stomach, in a year when Easter was as late 00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:20.530 align:middle line:90% as it could possibly be. 00:28:20.530 --> 00:28:24.460 align:middle line:84% Or perhaps I am a military railway to you, 00:28:24.460 --> 00:28:28.850 align:middle line:84% another city with transient miles of criminals. 00:28:28.850 --> 00:28:32.770 align:middle line:84% But when rain arrives on the far side of emptiness, 00:28:32.770 --> 00:28:35.440 align:middle line:84% like an identity scarcely dreamed, 00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:38.710 align:middle line:84% and surrounds you with its unintelligible silence, 00:28:38.710 --> 00:28:41.830 align:middle line:84% its enormously comforting speech, 00:28:41.830 --> 00:28:46.480 align:middle line:84% even if it's talking to itself, as long as it talks, 00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:47.500 align:middle line:90% I will listen." 00:28:47.500 --> 00:28:51.760 align:middle line:90% 00:28:51.760 --> 00:28:55.090 align:middle line:84% Then it was a very, very difficult year last year. 00:28:55.090 --> 00:28:59.770 align:middle line:84% And I'd been accused of all sorts of subterfuges 00:28:59.770 --> 00:29:04.000 align:middle line:84% and by various people that I didn't take 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:05.800 align:middle line:90% account of the Troubles enough. 00:29:05.800 --> 00:29:09.580 align:middle line:84% And believe me, I did, only too much. 00:29:09.580 --> 00:29:13.930 align:middle line:84% But I began to write slightly more explicitly. 00:29:13.930 --> 00:29:18.210 align:middle line:84% So it seemed as if it was becoming safer 00:29:18.210 --> 00:29:21.030 align:middle line:84% to say what you meant about things. 00:29:21.030 --> 00:29:26.940 align:middle line:84% So you will realize these are much more explicit as we go. 00:29:26.940 --> 00:29:29.370 align:middle line:90% I wrote this poem. 00:29:29.370 --> 00:29:35.160 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Radio Traitor," who was Lord Haw Haw in the last 00:29:35.160 --> 00:29:44.880 align:middle line:84% war, who was Irish, and was hanged by the British for giving 00:29:44.880 --> 00:29:46.320 align:middle line:90% information to the Germans. 00:29:46.320 --> 00:29:50.700 align:middle line:84% But in Ireland, he was sort of considered a hero. 00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:54.660 align:middle line:84% So he just seemed an image of the kind of complexity 00:29:54.660 --> 00:30:00.450 align:middle line:84% of loyalties that you felt during that period, 00:30:00.450 --> 00:30:05.040 align:middle line:84% during the whole thing that you were British, 00:30:05.040 --> 00:30:07.580 align:middle line:84% and you were Irish, and you were European. 00:30:07.580 --> 00:30:12.180 align:middle line:84% And you weren't sure where you belonged. 00:30:12.180 --> 00:30:15.450 align:middle line:84% So it's about the notion of betrayal, 00:30:15.450 --> 00:30:21.420 align:middle line:84% and the notion of country, and the notion of one lot being 00:30:21.420 --> 00:30:26.220 align:middle line:84% murderers and the other lot being policemen. 00:30:26.220 --> 00:30:28.620 align:middle line:90% So "The Radio Traitor." 00:30:28.620 --> 00:30:32.550 align:middle line:84% "Last year's honey, ill preserved, 00:30:32.550 --> 00:30:36.940 align:middle line:84% bitter beyond all sweetening, is set down 00:30:36.940 --> 00:30:42.540 align:middle line:84% at another point in aridity but drawn here by your longing. 00:30:42.540 --> 00:30:46.980 align:middle line:84% One of time's gables runs back to simplicity 00:30:46.980 --> 00:30:49.740 align:middle line:90% in your jessamined window. 00:30:49.740 --> 00:30:52.890 align:middle line:84% Because you offended the root of the law, 00:30:52.890 --> 00:30:58.560 align:middle line:84% your halls, stairs, and passages are in perpetual dusk. 00:30:58.560 --> 00:31:02.640 align:middle line:84% Because you rejoiced in the thought of the English dead, 00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:07.230 align:middle line:84% lying under the West wall, you were always treated as British, 00:31:07.230 --> 00:31:10.050 align:middle line:90% whether you were or not. 00:31:10.050 --> 00:31:14.460 align:middle line:84% Men, and men, and men crowd at a stretch of water, 00:31:14.460 --> 00:31:17.700 align:middle line:84% washing their clothes with vague faces, 00:31:17.700 --> 00:31:22.830 align:middle line:84% with defined bodies of different phases of the same man. 00:31:22.830 --> 00:31:26.610 align:middle line:84% You open and shut your breast, the rudiments 00:31:26.610 --> 00:31:31.020 align:middle line:84% of musketry, bayonet fighting, squad drill. 00:31:31.020 --> 00:31:35.130 align:middle line:84% Blood leaves your hands, your feet, your limbs and flows 00:31:35.130 --> 00:31:39.390 align:middle line:84% back to your heart like a cold change in the room. 00:31:39.390 --> 00:31:44.850 align:middle line:84% Waking opposite your neck fires, my pushed mind slept. 00:31:44.850 --> 00:31:49.440 align:middle line:84% You stepped faster than spring, defeating that love 00:31:49.440 --> 00:31:52.230 align:middle line:90% that swears itself undying. 00:31:52.230 --> 00:31:55.470 align:middle line:84% Taking the skies and normal work with you, 00:31:55.470 --> 00:31:58.575 align:middle line:84% being partly above where the rain falls." 00:31:58.575 --> 00:32:01.620 align:middle line:90% 00:32:01.620 --> 00:32:06.690 align:middle line:84% And this was when the Declaration came out 00:32:06.690 --> 00:32:08.340 align:middle line:90% in December. 00:32:08.340 --> 00:32:13.800 align:middle line:84% And it was an absolute breakthrough 00:32:13.800 --> 00:32:16.410 align:middle line:90% in psychological terms. 00:32:16.410 --> 00:32:18.810 align:middle line:84% I mean it was the first thing that 00:32:18.810 --> 00:32:25.470 align:middle line:84% happened that seemed to be any kind of move to stop. 00:32:25.470 --> 00:32:28.260 align:middle line:84% It seemed to me that the politicians and everyone 00:32:28.260 --> 00:32:31.590 align:middle line:84% else were just allowing people to be killed over, 00:32:31.590 --> 00:32:34.950 align:middle line:84% and over, and over, and didn't care. 00:32:34.950 --> 00:32:44.130 align:middle line:84% So the Declaration that came out was a wonderful day. 00:32:44.130 --> 00:32:46.320 align:middle line:84% We all just sat glued to the television. 00:32:46.320 --> 00:32:49.140 align:middle line:84% And it felt just like a total change, 00:32:49.140 --> 00:32:53.590 align:middle line:84% even though it took another nine months to make any difference. 00:32:53.590 --> 00:33:01.740 align:middle line:84% So I wrote this poem to celebrate that early moment. 00:33:01.740 --> 00:33:04.860 align:middle line:84% The sky-- It's called "To Make Two Bridges Necessary." 00:33:04.860 --> 00:33:08.580 align:middle line:84% They were rebuilding this new bridge over the Lagan 00:33:08.580 --> 00:33:10.870 align:middle line:90% at the time. 00:33:10.870 --> 00:33:14.820 align:middle line:84% So it's called "To Make Two Bridges Necessary." 00:33:14.820 --> 00:33:20.220 align:middle line:84% "The sky is all fresh horses and unusual tidiness. 00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:23.490 align:middle line:84% Jets of yellow and lavender marriages 00:33:23.490 --> 00:33:27.810 align:middle line:84% with a twist of pink silk where its empire runs down, 00:33:27.810 --> 00:33:33.090 align:middle line:84% all brilliance, all morality, all tarry-browns. 00:33:33.090 --> 00:33:35.940 align:middle line:84% Now its flecked, beige vault holds 00:33:35.940 --> 00:33:40.890 align:middle line:84% a seagull, ready to leave, like a hatchet beside a bed. 00:33:40.890 --> 00:33:44.460 align:middle line:84% A pencil scratch folded from the day before, 00:33:44.460 --> 00:33:49.710 align:middle line:84% open with the lean color of our sleeping last night. 00:33:49.710 --> 00:33:53.640 align:middle line:84% I already wear all that you have imagined. 00:33:53.640 --> 00:33:58.380 align:middle line:84% Your knee arched like a blizzard, anchoring my chest, 00:33:58.380 --> 00:34:02.340 align:middle line:84% or a swollen river bridge conveniently looping 00:34:02.340 --> 00:34:07.080 align:middle line:84% into its street clothes, out from music again. 00:34:07.080 --> 00:34:10.350 align:middle line:84% The sand between tides will thank you 00:34:10.350 --> 00:34:14.100 align:middle line:84% for fielding freedom with the quick of your hand 00:34:14.100 --> 00:34:16.320 align:middle line:90% and the crux of your ear. 00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:21.510 align:middle line:84% That memory plus moisture in the air, more unawakened, 00:34:21.510 --> 00:34:24.585 align:middle line:90% fireless lips, unlevied hair." 00:34:24.585 --> 00:34:29.350 align:middle line:90% 00:34:29.350 --> 00:34:31.120 align:middle line:90% This is called "Blue Doctrine." 00:34:31.120 --> 00:34:33.889 align:middle line:90% 00:34:33.889 --> 00:34:36.440 align:middle line:84% Not quite sure, it's just again around the same time 00:34:36.440 --> 00:34:39.739 align:middle line:84% when everything was very, very touch and go. 00:34:39.739 --> 00:34:43.489 align:middle line:84% And everything could have gone in the direction 00:34:43.489 --> 00:34:47.900 align:middle line:90% of havoc or harmony. 00:34:47.900 --> 00:34:50.989 align:middle line:90% So it's called "Blue Doctrine." 00:34:50.989 --> 00:34:53.780 align:middle line:84% "The boundary of the light will not 00:34:53.780 --> 00:34:56.719 align:middle line:84% coincide with the edge of the window. 00:34:56.719 --> 00:35:02.240 align:middle line:84% With me by his side, he's not compelled to think about me, 00:35:02.240 --> 00:35:07.550 align:middle line:84% nor would he care whether my lips were more or less red. 00:35:07.550 --> 00:35:12.590 align:middle line:84% I feel like breaking the enchantment with a fierce shout, 00:35:12.590 --> 00:35:16.220 align:middle line:84% rendering needless the deception of color. 00:35:16.220 --> 00:35:19.280 align:middle line:84% Or writing each sentence in a different color, 00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:22.310 align:middle line:84% so it resembles a little flag, having 00:35:22.310 --> 00:35:25.520 align:middle line:90% for background, a half sun. 00:35:25.520 --> 00:35:28.280 align:middle line:84% For those who sit in the darkened doorways 00:35:28.280 --> 00:35:33.260 align:middle line:84% of their dwellings devoid of doors, the adding sound of bells 00:35:33.260 --> 00:35:36.170 align:middle line:84% can mean whatever you want it to. 00:35:36.170 --> 00:35:41.990 align:middle line:84% Mobilization, a war like tempo, passive defense. 00:35:41.990 --> 00:35:45.200 align:middle line:84% Over my head, a bat unfolds its wings 00:35:45.200 --> 00:35:48.950 align:middle line:84% like hands that seem to seek each other's warmth, 00:35:48.950 --> 00:35:52.520 align:middle line:84% or an eyelid opened in the pulse of a glove, 00:35:52.520 --> 00:35:57.050 align:middle line:84% as in the coat of arms of my native city. 00:35:57.050 --> 00:36:02.210 align:middle line:84% The air of the first night of summer, not a moment too early, 00:36:02.210 --> 00:36:08.030 align:middle line:84% not a moment too late, leaps into my paper bed in the uniform 00:36:08.030 --> 00:36:10.220 align:middle line:90% of sleep from the waist down. 00:36:10.220 --> 00:36:13.700 align:middle line:84% First a long stretch, then mistakes, 00:36:13.700 --> 00:36:18.620 align:middle line:84% then jumping by tens until his stomach is tight against 00:36:18.620 --> 00:36:23.175 align:middle line:84% my thighs, ending in a row of knots as if he had been with 00:36:23.175 --> 00:36:23.675 align:middle line:90% a woman." 00:36:23.675 --> 00:36:26.950 align:middle line:90% 00:36:26.950 --> 00:36:32.290 align:middle line:84% And this was one about a flight to Canada 00:36:32.290 --> 00:36:35.380 align:middle line:84% and coming home again, and how everything again 00:36:35.380 --> 00:36:37.820 align:middle line:90% was still very uncertain. 00:36:37.820 --> 00:36:46.660 align:middle line:84% And you didn't know whether to celebrate or stock up your tins. 00:36:46.660 --> 00:36:54.340 align:middle line:84% So it's called-- again, they're rather strange titles and not 00:36:54.340 --> 00:36:56.110 align:middle line:90% any stranger than any others. 00:36:56.110 --> 00:36:59.050 align:middle line:84% But to me even, they even seem strange to me. 00:36:59.050 --> 00:37:00.520 align:middle line:90% This one is an amazing title. 00:37:00.520 --> 00:37:02.090 align:middle line:90% I love the title. 00:37:02.090 --> 00:37:06.410 align:middle line:84% It's called "Shoulder-length, Caged Parrot Earrings," 00:37:06.410 --> 00:37:12.190 align:middle line:84% which were all the rage last summer, 00:37:12.190 --> 00:37:13.750 align:middle line:90% especially among the men. 00:37:13.750 --> 00:37:15.880 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:37:15.880 --> 00:37:22.570 align:middle line:84% "Female eyes, male hand, head full of closed sky. 00:37:22.570 --> 00:37:27.730 align:middle line:84% Your throat is still open though your blood is being dried. 00:37:27.730 --> 00:37:32.350 align:middle line:84% The clock you started up in me, leaves the plainest roses 00:37:32.350 --> 00:37:33.940 align:middle line:90% barely aged. 00:37:33.940 --> 00:37:38.980 align:middle line:84% You play a secret set of muscles to a rifle to your cheek. 00:37:38.980 --> 00:37:42.610 align:middle line:84% Your nights billow no more than truces swimming 00:37:42.610 --> 00:37:44.620 align:middle line:90% towards daylight. 00:37:44.620 --> 00:37:48.370 align:middle line:84% How lightly then your rich body weighed. 00:37:48.370 --> 00:37:54.010 align:middle line:84% Tonight it weighs even less, low flying as meadow colored lead. 00:37:54.010 --> 00:37:57.100 align:middle line:84% Overflying, the white ruin of waves. 00:37:57.100 --> 00:38:01.160 align:middle line:84% Their feeble climaxes sucking spring from the ground. 00:38:01.160 --> 00:38:07.000 align:middle line:84% A nude beach, whose skin rings out like an Angelus in foliage. 00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:10.780 align:middle line:84% Instead of my communion watch, I read the hour 00:38:10.780 --> 00:38:13.240 align:middle line:90% in the stubble of your beard. 00:38:13.240 --> 00:38:18.100 align:middle line:84% And now begin to live like a too faithful people, whose 00:38:18.100 --> 00:38:21.910 align:middle line:84% last conquered Hamlet has ceased signaling. 00:38:21.910 --> 00:38:25.870 align:middle line:84% Bastille Day weather covers me like waltzing. 00:38:25.870 --> 00:38:31.690 align:middle line:84% One horse towns caught in ice or seeds in mad acceleration, 00:38:31.690 --> 00:38:33.610 align:middle line:90% Europe bound. 00:38:33.610 --> 00:38:36.070 align:middle line:84% Your arms are a living robe of Earth 00:38:36.070 --> 00:38:39.760 align:middle line:84% you halve with me so death is a quarantine-- 00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:41.530 align:middle line:90% only half a death. 00:38:41.530 --> 00:38:44.590 align:middle line:84% You hold me like an unlit cigarette, 00:38:44.590 --> 00:38:49.720 align:middle line:84% while you burn match after match and offer yourself in vain. 00:38:49.720 --> 00:38:53.410 align:middle line:84% You run star splashed over the rust which would 00:38:53.410 --> 00:38:55.330 align:middle line:90% have gushed through your hands. 00:38:55.330 --> 00:39:00.400 align:middle line:84% 6 months' obscure sap thrust halts the coastline 00:39:00.400 --> 00:39:06.100 align:middle line:84% of your so-called "Sea Girt Isle," so habitable province, 00:39:06.100 --> 00:39:09.160 align:middle line:90% serving up its ultimate smile. 00:39:09.160 --> 00:39:12.640 align:middle line:84% The small green plant in the wound on your wrist 00:39:12.640 --> 00:39:15.250 align:middle line:84% became the lens through which I saw 00:39:15.250 --> 00:39:20.320 align:middle line:84% how air could pierce the ground: how black clouds fattening 00:39:20.320 --> 00:39:23.350 align:middle line:90% were slave joys you rejected. 00:39:23.350 --> 00:39:28.330 align:middle line:84% Flight cramped child, hollowed into airworthy place. 00:39:28.330 --> 00:39:33.700 align:middle line:84% Your lingering future is less meditated necessary than to sail 00:39:33.700 --> 00:39:39.580 align:middle line:84% this eve of battle, national holiday sky." 00:39:39.580 --> 00:39:43.510 align:middle line:84% I know we paid a visit to Cyprus, away from it 00:39:43.510 --> 00:39:47.290 align:middle line:84% all type of thing, and found we were right back in it. 00:39:47.290 --> 00:39:51.700 align:middle line:84% And there was nothing but British soldiers 00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:52.700 align:middle line:90% about the place. 00:39:52.700 --> 00:39:54.980 align:middle line:90% So it was home from home. 00:39:54.980 --> 00:39:57.040 align:middle line:84% And so this is a poem about Cyprus. 00:39:57.040 --> 00:40:00.160 align:middle line:84% And again, they had a really terrible war there 00:40:00.160 --> 00:40:06.580 align:middle line:84% and a lot of cemeteries just full of people 00:40:06.580 --> 00:40:11.920 align:middle line:84% who died during their tragic war, which is much 00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:13.600 align:middle line:90% worse than anything we had. 00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:20.350 align:middle line:84% So fearing a separate experience as I wrote this. 00:40:20.350 --> 00:40:22.360 align:middle line:90% It's called "Timed Chess." 00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:26.080 align:middle line:90% And it's addressed to Cyprus. 00:40:26.080 --> 00:40:28.960 align:middle line:84% "You break the darkness like an apple, 00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:33.250 align:middle line:84% making fingers of lips and lips of fingers. 00:40:33.250 --> 00:40:38.680 align:middle line:84% You twist lathered wrists into hands, full mortal messages 00:40:38.680 --> 00:40:43.850 align:middle line:84% in the slow closing of both eyes till only the face counts. 00:40:43.850 --> 00:40:46.930 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, like an old piece of the coast, 00:40:46.930 --> 00:40:51.490 align:middle line:84% following in cloud pieces the shapes of Italian clouds, 00:40:51.490 --> 00:40:56.890 align:middle line:84% you send a strange perfume in your stead, indubitably male. 00:40:56.890 --> 00:41:00.040 align:middle line:84% A carnation passed through a buttonhole. 00:41:00.040 --> 00:41:04.840 align:middle line:84% No journey is more safely beautiful than all the miles 00:41:04.840 --> 00:41:05.560 align:middle line:90% of you. 00:41:05.560 --> 00:41:09.520 align:middle line:84% Your many degrees of death lying almost a lifetime 00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:10.930 align:middle line:90% in the distance. 00:41:10.930 --> 00:41:15.940 align:middle line:84% When the sky turns frail over your many lobed harbor, 00:41:15.940 --> 00:41:19.870 align:middle line:84% your sea quality opens fresh petals. 00:41:19.870 --> 00:41:23.320 align:middle line:84% Your hedges hesitate to change, keeping 00:41:23.320 --> 00:41:27.220 align:middle line:84% their beard like an overhanging war or a slightly 00:41:27.220 --> 00:41:28.990 align:middle line:90% cowardly peace. 00:41:28.990 --> 00:41:32.410 align:middle line:84% Your sun hungry, end of winter colors 00:41:32.410 --> 00:41:35.860 align:middle line:84% incompletely shed the enemy world. 00:41:35.860 --> 00:41:40.780 align:middle line:84% The denier of my sleep, woman or a ghost, is a full river. 00:41:40.780 --> 00:41:45.970 align:middle line:84% Looted wines in large throatfuls flavor the tight air. 00:41:45.970 --> 00:41:49.270 align:middle line:84% All the land is behind, the unworked nowhere, 00:41:49.270 --> 00:41:51.865 align:middle line:90% repeating the her and the her." 00:41:51.865 --> 00:41:58.000 align:middle line:90% 00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:00.730 align:middle line:84% And I wrote these sort of love poems, which 00:42:00.730 --> 00:42:06.310 align:middle line:84% are meant to really be about the Catholics and the Protestants. 00:42:06.310 --> 00:42:09.520 align:middle line:84% Which it always amazes me that we're 00:42:09.520 --> 00:42:11.110 align:middle line:90% interpreted as being enemies. 00:42:11.110 --> 00:42:12.760 align:middle line:90% We're crazy about each other. 00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:14.680 align:middle line:90% We even marry each other. 00:42:14.680 --> 00:42:18.550 align:middle line:84% And it's ludicrous to think that it's 00:42:18.550 --> 00:42:23.950 align:middle line:84% anything to do with not getting on because we get on fine. 00:42:23.950 --> 00:42:28.780 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem about how fine we get on. 00:42:28.780 --> 00:42:32.890 align:middle line:84% We even apologize when we kill each other-- 00:42:32.890 --> 00:42:36.370 align:middle line:90% "The Colony Room." 00:42:36.370 --> 00:42:40.510 align:middle line:84% "If you are touching, you are also being touched. 00:42:40.510 --> 00:42:44.770 align:middle line:84% If I place my hands in prayer, palm to palm, 00:42:44.770 --> 00:42:47.290 align:middle line:90% I give your hands new meaning. 00:42:47.290 --> 00:42:49.750 align:middle line:90% Your left hand calm. 00:42:49.750 --> 00:42:53.680 align:middle line:84% You define my body, center of your hand. 00:42:53.680 --> 00:42:57.280 align:middle line:84% I hear, through the shingled roof of your skin, 00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:02.830 align:middle line:84% your ear shaped body enter the curved floor line of my skin. 00:43:02.830 --> 00:43:06.220 align:middle line:84% My hands just skim the cushioned opening, 00:43:06.220 --> 00:43:08.260 align:middle line:90% the glitter of your mouth. 00:43:08.260 --> 00:43:12.070 align:middle line:84% All woods, roots, and flowers scent and stretch 00:43:12.070 --> 00:43:15.140 align:middle line:90% the map that covers your body. 00:43:15.140 --> 00:43:18.820 align:middle line:84% Less touchable than the birth or continuation of Ireland, 00:43:18.820 --> 00:43:23.980 align:middle line:84% in its railed enclosure, your root note in its sexual climate, 00:43:23.980 --> 00:43:26.110 align:middle line:90% your kingdom come eyes, 00:43:26.110 --> 00:43:30.820 align:middle line:84% year long, inactive lover, durable as paradise. 00:43:30.820 --> 00:43:34.750 align:middle line:84% Like small shocks in the winter, neck to neck, 00:43:34.750 --> 00:43:39.040 align:middle line:84% the mirrors reflected the colored ray the evenings needed 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:43.720 align:middle line:84% most, when the day asked for night in that mistletoe way." 00:43:43.720 --> 00:43:49.340 align:middle line:90% 00:43:49.340 --> 00:43:51.650 align:middle line:84% And just a couple more of these, and then I'm 00:43:51.650 --> 00:43:54.090 align:middle line:84% going to finish with a love poem. 00:43:54.090 --> 00:43:57.830 align:middle line:84% So I'm surprised that I can read a love poem, 00:43:57.830 --> 00:44:02.870 align:middle line:84% but I feel like reading a love for some reason. 00:44:02.870 --> 00:44:07.160 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Sickness of the Cloth." 00:44:07.160 --> 00:44:09.470 align:middle line:90% "Summer is your worst hour. 00:44:09.470 --> 00:44:12.980 align:middle line:84% When everything has turned completely golden, 00:44:12.980 --> 00:44:16.640 align:middle line:84% you will recover your blue transparent sky. 00:44:16.640 --> 00:44:19.590 align:middle line:84% When the gardens of evening begin to suffer, 00:44:19.590 --> 00:44:24.230 align:middle line:84% your olive clothed hillsides will taste of honey and dawn. 00:44:24.230 --> 00:44:28.370 align:middle line:84% Now it rains even though God doesn't want it to. 00:44:28.370 --> 00:44:32.630 align:middle line:84% A phantom river feeds the cowed impoverished city. 00:44:32.630 --> 00:44:36.710 align:middle line:84% We see in looking from squares, the souls of all 00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:38.660 align:middle line:90% who used to cross them. 00:44:38.660 --> 00:44:41.660 align:middle line:84% Crosses look like missiles, the rose 00:44:41.660 --> 00:44:45.770 align:middle line:84% colored blotches of feeble Republican bombings 00:44:45.770 --> 00:44:48.530 align:middle line:90% embroider a Liberal flag. 00:44:48.530 --> 00:44:51.800 align:middle line:84% Where the unsurfaced road loops sharply, 00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:56.400 align:middle line:84% a sea of fruit and dark flesh made for the moon is born. 00:44:56.400 --> 00:44:59.570 align:middle line:84% Its silence deadens contrary musics, 00:44:59.570 --> 00:45:01.820 align:middle line:90% but its tongue is luminous. 00:45:01.820 --> 00:45:06.080 align:middle line:84% From November to November, the nights of reeds and shadow 00:45:06.080 --> 00:45:07.880 align:middle line:90% exchange sunflowers. 00:45:07.880 --> 00:45:11.900 align:middle line:84% The moons of that place are beautiful as Joseph. 00:45:11.900 --> 00:45:16.310 align:middle line:84% And thousands of winged insects spread myrtle there. 00:45:16.310 --> 00:45:23.430 align:middle line:84% Each living cell thawed by the last, still bearing warmth." 00:45:23.430 --> 00:45:27.500 align:middle line:84% This is a poem I wrote about all the political prisoners. 00:45:27.500 --> 00:45:32.330 align:middle line:84% And it also relates to poets as well who 00:45:32.330 --> 00:45:37.040 align:middle line:90% are outside of the normal. 00:45:37.040 --> 00:45:45.410 align:middle line:84% So I felt in a way, at least they were hopefully getting out 00:45:45.410 --> 00:45:49.710 align:middle line:84% of prison, and I was always going to be in one as a poet. 00:45:49.710 --> 00:45:57.110 align:middle line:84% So it's really about poets and about political prisoners. 00:45:57.110 --> 00:46:00.740 align:middle line:84% So it's called "The Spirit Dolls." 00:46:00.740 --> 00:46:05.420 align:middle line:84% "They subtract us as matter from their lives. 00:46:05.420 --> 00:46:10.070 align:middle line:84% Spice merchants, tanners, coopers, weavers, wine 00:46:10.070 --> 00:46:15.270 align:middle line:84% merchants, innkeepers, florists, casual mercenaries-- 00:46:15.270 --> 00:46:19.140 align:middle line:84% they made themselves up as they went along. 00:46:19.140 --> 00:46:24.060 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] outsiders as a new us and an old them. 00:46:24.060 --> 00:46:29.400 align:middle line:84% In the scoured pot of our acid, indigestible, please and thank 00:46:29.400 --> 00:46:30.870 align:middle line:90% you army. 00:46:30.870 --> 00:46:34.260 align:middle line:84% And now, from their eerie inland sea, 00:46:34.260 --> 00:46:37.710 align:middle line:84% from water house or drowning cell, 00:46:37.710 --> 00:46:41.670 align:middle line:84% a species of antiworkers, antibodies, 00:46:41.670 --> 00:46:45.450 align:middle line:84% professional loiters, ne'er do wells, 00:46:45.450 --> 00:46:49.740 align:middle line:84% emerge corrected by clandestine trusts. 00:46:49.740 --> 00:46:55.530 align:middle line:84% Like the reputed male, Semper Augustus, red flames on white, 00:46:55.530 --> 00:47:02.400 align:middle line:84% to avoid turning out as a nation, turning into a state." 00:47:02.400 --> 00:47:05.940 align:middle line:84% And this is the last one on this, 00:47:05.940 --> 00:47:07.650 align:middle line:84% and then I'll read the love poem. 00:47:07.650 --> 00:47:12.130 align:middle line:84% Hopefully it is a love poem, not always sure if it is or not. 00:47:12.130 --> 00:47:15.420 align:middle line:90% So this is a war poem. 00:47:15.420 --> 00:47:18.930 align:middle line:84% It's called "Condition Three," which it was the last poem I 00:47:18.930 --> 00:47:20.940 align:middle line:90% wrote before the ceasefire. 00:47:20.940 --> 00:47:29.020 align:middle line:84% And it was about that state that I'm in all the time. 00:47:29.020 --> 00:47:31.950 align:middle line:84% But the rest of the country were also in, 00:47:31.950 --> 00:47:34.350 align:middle line:84% where you feel people are sitting with their hands 00:47:34.350 --> 00:47:36.300 align:middle line:90% on buttons and everything. 00:47:36.300 --> 00:47:40.020 align:middle line:90% You just blow up any minute. 00:47:40.020 --> 00:47:42.990 align:middle line:90% OK, "Condition Three." 00:47:42.990 --> 00:47:47.340 align:middle line:84% "Dawn that I always thought of as fixed, the most closed 00:47:47.340 --> 00:47:50.460 align:middle line:90% country, embers more often. 00:47:50.460 --> 00:47:52.710 align:middle line:84% Loquacious womb mosaics the breadth 00:47:52.710 --> 00:47:55.650 align:middle line:90% of dusk, an overnight autumn. 00:47:55.650 --> 00:48:00.930 align:middle line:84% Some deep unsweetened, sour smelling ingredient elbows 00:48:00.930 --> 00:48:04.050 align:middle line:84% out the time related twittering of birds. 00:48:04.050 --> 00:48:07.230 align:middle line:84% Night crusts walking against pillows, 00:48:07.230 --> 00:48:10.770 align:middle line:84% so that I miss their never denied noise, 00:48:10.770 --> 00:48:15.600 align:middle line:84% like the largely unheard sounds of war, the color of war, 00:48:15.600 --> 00:48:20.400 align:middle line:84% and find myself wishing I were a weather whipped rocket walking 00:48:20.400 --> 00:48:23.100 align:middle line:90% into news of any kind. 00:48:23.100 --> 00:48:28.170 align:middle line:84% An unreal warship sculpts the coast with its watchful eloquent 00:48:28.170 --> 00:48:28.920 align:middle line:90% English. 00:48:28.920 --> 00:48:33.510 align:middle line:84% Its cool, watered path, from a mid-century midwinter 00:48:33.510 --> 00:48:39.130 align:middle line:84% to a clock-less marriage summer has frozen old time but its own. 00:48:39.130 --> 00:48:42.080 align:middle line:84% It has probably hurt someone I knew. 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:44.580 align:middle line:84% There is some heart beginning to happen. 00:48:44.580 --> 00:48:49.590 align:middle line:84% Its slow bleed bringing eyes down into pages, 00:48:49.590 --> 00:48:54.120 align:middle line:84% mouths down to the onion thin sheets of paper, butterflied, 00:48:54.120 --> 00:48:56.190 align:middle line:90% ebonied by the bombs. 00:48:56.190 --> 00:49:00.840 align:middle line:84% Its aloneness corners onto mine, is quilted on like land. 00:49:00.840 --> 00:49:04.560 align:middle line:84% It spreads open my warm days by the dayful, 00:49:04.560 --> 00:49:07.200 align:middle line:90% all its seamless miles. 00:49:07.200 --> 00:49:11.910 align:middle line:84% I'm listening in black and white to what speaks to me in blue. 00:49:11.910 --> 00:49:16.650 align:middle line:84% In that peacock power of voice, whose vistas furnish the house 00:49:16.650 --> 00:49:20.040 align:middle line:84% till the night, and enchanted day overwhelms 00:49:20.040 --> 00:49:22.440 align:middle line:90% any man made light. 00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:25.170 align:middle line:84% When there is a distance to it or a fast 00:49:25.170 --> 00:49:29.280 align:middle line:84% from the incense of talk, its wound in other voices, 00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:33.390 align:middle line:84% in mouths sewn in protest, in arms crossed behind necks, 00:49:33.390 --> 00:49:36.570 align:middle line:84% and eyes which are almost too calm. 00:49:36.570 --> 00:49:41.070 align:middle line:84% A sudden set of mid-sentence years will be served like home 00:49:41.070 --> 00:49:46.860 align:middle line:84% hours or the last time your bare lips on certain shrines were 00:49:46.860 --> 00:49:48.690 align:middle line:90% used." 00:49:48.690 --> 00:49:53.730 align:middle line:84% And this one is called "The Keeper Ring." 00:49:53.730 --> 00:49:58.140 align:middle line:84% And a keeper ring is a ring that keeps other rings on 00:49:58.140 --> 00:50:03.255 align:middle line:84% and sometimes very necessary item in your wardrobe. 00:50:03.255 --> 00:50:06.340 align:middle line:90% 00:50:06.340 --> 00:50:13.470 align:middle line:84% So if you look at Irish short stories, a lot of the males 00:50:13.470 --> 00:50:15.840 align:middle line:84% write these very sentimental stories 00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:18.240 align:middle line:90% about women losing their rings. 00:50:18.240 --> 00:50:22.000 align:middle line:84% And this is my effort in that direction. 00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:26.280 align:middle line:84% So it's about domestic love, which 00:50:26.280 --> 00:50:29.850 align:middle line:90% is probably the nicest kind. 00:50:29.850 --> 00:50:32.070 align:middle line:90% Maybe it's the only kind. 00:50:32.070 --> 00:50:35.670 align:middle line:84% OK, so it's called "The Keeper Ring." 00:50:35.670 --> 00:50:40.710 align:middle line:84% "My eyes change in the direction of the gentlest brown. 00:50:40.710 --> 00:50:45.870 align:middle line:84% Yours are all the shapes that the blackbird's egg shows. 00:50:45.870 --> 00:50:50.580 align:middle line:84% The rain is an open display on the emptiness of my lips. 00:50:50.580 --> 00:50:55.380 align:middle line:84% Sweet, because odorless, it muzzles into everything. 00:50:55.380 --> 00:50:58.200 align:middle line:84% The roads between us are ill lit. 00:50:58.200 --> 00:51:02.550 align:middle line:84% The traffic islands, our phone kiosks, the cruising areas 00:51:02.550 --> 00:51:05.490 align:middle line:84% have less reality than the equator, 00:51:05.490 --> 00:51:10.980 align:middle line:84% like a face suggesting movement no less than a bird's wings. 00:51:10.980 --> 00:51:15.480 align:middle line:84% Yours is a side of life I have not lain on. 00:51:15.480 --> 00:51:19.430 align:middle line:84% Though once I leaned out of bed and stretched to my arm to 00:51:19.430 --> 00:51:23.510 align:middle line:84% within an inch of the base of your sleeping throat, 00:51:23.510 --> 00:51:25.910 align:middle line:90% as if willing you to wake. 00:51:25.910 --> 00:51:28.910 align:middle line:84% This dark house we had planned to leave 00:51:28.910 --> 00:51:32.420 align:middle line:84% carries a single letter on its back. 00:51:32.420 --> 00:51:37.610 align:middle line:84% The floor rang out in lozenge greens and two pairs of leaves, 00:51:37.610 --> 00:51:40.910 align:middle line:84% as though in its world, there were no autumn. 00:51:40.910 --> 00:51:44.750 align:middle line:84% The hollyhocks, decapitated, swim in a basin 00:51:44.750 --> 00:51:47.030 align:middle line:90% chased with four birds. 00:51:47.030 --> 00:51:49.910 align:middle line:84% Each tress on the mantelpiece fringe 00:51:49.910 --> 00:51:52.430 align:middle line:90% is plaited into four strands. 00:51:52.430 --> 00:51:55.970 align:middle line:84% At the end of each, a little golden ball. 00:51:55.970 --> 00:51:59.600 align:middle line:84% You fold your napkin into the packed muscles 00:51:59.600 --> 00:52:01.430 align:middle line:90% of a millfeuilles. 00:52:01.430 --> 00:52:06.680 align:middle line:84% I stir mine into the French gray lining of my cup 00:52:06.680 --> 00:52:12.530 align:middle line:84% till it is reborn in the blue embroidered saucer of its nest. 00:52:12.530 --> 00:52:18.080 align:middle line:84% The house dreams in the skip of my sentence, flame colored now 00:52:18.080 --> 00:52:19.890 align:middle line:90% Italian world. 00:52:19.890 --> 00:52:24.530 align:middle line:84% Though the snow fed light passes, one tree only." 00:52:24.530 --> 00:52:26.270 align:middle line:90% OK, thank you. 00:52:26.270 --> 00:52:29.620 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:52:29.620 --> 00:52:37.000 align:middle line:90%