WEBVTT

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I'll switch over now to
this other long poem,

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which is in your programme.

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This is a theme
that I realize I've

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been dealing with more or
less all my poetic life.

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Because the act of writing
a poem, or the creative act,

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I suppose, with any artist,
is a little bit like God's act

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and started work.

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You can be a very
pompous artist about this

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and really think that you're
starting a very great world.

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Or you can be a
very humble artist.

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But that has nothing to do
with the wonderful sense which

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I think the artist has
when he gets going.

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But he's really got
this thing by the tail,

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and he's going to
do it all himself.

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And it's going to be his world.

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Well, if you think of this
thesis or this feeling

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in relation to Genesis,
why then you as the poet

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sit up or set
yourself up like God

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and set to create your
world in seven days,

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as God did in Genesis.

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So this is how I got started
on this particular poem.

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I thought, well, by golly, I'll
write a poem for seven days.

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And then at the
end of seven days

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it'll just be the way
it was back in Genesis.

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Well, as you will
see, it didn't always

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come out as I wanted it to.

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But here is a poem in
a lot of fragmentary--

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in a lot of pieces just
following the Genesis pattern.

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Introduction-- "on the
last day of the old world,

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I stretched out my bones
like a fossil fathoms

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down and bade times'
leavings cover

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me layer on layer
and Death sweep

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over, over me in her sea gown.

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On the first day
of the new world,

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I stood on a porch on a hill
in the dark with a pencil

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and backlit with
light in the east

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and took my pencil with me into
the light and set to brood.

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On first looking at Crotched
Mountain, New Hampshire.

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"Take from my thoughts
those shells Paleozoic.

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No petrified
foraminifer yet am I.

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Leave all the siftings
stiffen in their sea beds.

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To live in the past, says
this old saw, is to die.

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Let a sun now be born.

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Let a mountain be folded.

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And now let the sun climb up
it and queerly peer over at me

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as I birth and eyes open
to a new landscape there,

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a new seer here.

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I call these pines
pines, this ivy poison.

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I call all those small birds
finches, that big one crow.

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But what will I
call that mountain?

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Crotched?

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Absurd.

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Yet Crotched it is, I
say so, and I know it.

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Praise be to me, not God,
him I haven't spoke yet,

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to this new day.

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May I now breakfast beget.

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On first knowing God.

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At breakfast, I
had French toast.

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I nomenclate thee French toast.

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And drank several
cups of coffee.

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This would soon be arithmetic.

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And came back to my bathroom
and emptied my new bowels

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and said to the
pines, who is God?

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The wind is up, the pines
noisy but recondite.

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An ant crawled up my shirt.

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I took off my shirt and baked
and looked at Mount Crotched

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and dozed.

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Who was to tell me, tell me?

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Not the leaves, not the pines,
not the sun, not the ant.

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Had I made nothing
would speak to me?

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I went to the finch in
the leaves and said,

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someone must say.

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But he flew away.

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How'd I do, Robin?

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You on a stump.

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But the robin zipped
to the underbrush,

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and a hush fell on the brush.

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And I understood as I stood
bare to the waist on a stone

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that the robin had known.

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The stone upheld me.

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To my porch then did I walk
and did to the mountain

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cry, God, God am I.

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The second day.

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On the second day of creation,
I rose again with the sun

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and walked up and
down the Earth.

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I, the One.

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But I heard the pert jay
and saw the drooped birch

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and stubbed the stone.

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Whose was this church?

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So I came cold to my cabin and
lighted a Sterno can and drank

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tea at my desk, idle, a man.

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And I knew then how soon
begetting turns to begot,

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and wondered who, from the first
day, would choose God's lot.

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Lament.

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But who is he, said the God,
said the man, who is choosing?

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The bird and the poem take
shape, and the act of shaping

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is a dying into the shaping, the
bird's God shriveling to a bird,

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the poem's to a poem.

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From the heavens, the Earth's
begetters, Gods and poets,

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straggle down to that
Earth, makers unmade,

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and knock at the Earth's
doors and go to their trade.

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And their trade, said the God,
said the man, the God part done,

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is to live by their
bondage to what was once

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their sun, watching the days
sift down to the great sea bed,

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waiting, those dead
Gods to be dead.

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The Third Day.

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There was no third sunrise.

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Crotched was smoked up.

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I stayed inside
at the fire, pared

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my toenails, looked at
the veins in my legs,

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felt the bones' nearness.

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The cabin was dark, the chairs
sulky, gray the windows.

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The whole had the
look of a party that

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didn't come off because
somebody put all the liquor

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and talk in a drawer,
and said: sit there.

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Be sad.

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Concentrate.

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It was a meditative goddamn
place, the books stacked

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in a corner reading themselves,
and the wooden lists

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on the walls of
writers, composers,

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Gods who had been there before
me, now just hanging there.

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And the big table with four
feet poised by the jungle (rug)

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ready to rip something up,
maybe a poet, and prove Darwin.

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I did push ups, but
the younger poet

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was getting too old for
push ups. So I went outside

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and the sun was out
of the smoke now.

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And the birds and the bugs were
at it again, world without end,

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so I went to breakfast.

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Tell me the story of Job,
mom, the story of Job.

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Was he the one with the
big scratchy bathrobe,

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or was he the man
with the locusts?

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Mom, tell me.

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I want to hear about
somebody like me.

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Breakfast with poached eggs
and a good bit of talk,

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and the toaster
popped up and down,

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and the artists looked nervous.

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I thought of all
of them thinking

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like me of trudging each back to
his God hole after the coffee,

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then sitting a
while on the toilet,

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then tidying this up and that
up, and smoking like mad,

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and circling the desk like
a hawk coming in with care

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on a smelly carcass.

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Gods?

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I went back and did all that.

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What is the name of
that Indian in Cooper,

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who walks through the
primeval forest like a ghost?

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Teach me the lore
of silence, how

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to make it creepily through
the thicket on dry twigs,

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eating dry toast.

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I went and sat like a
stump in the 9:00 AM sun,

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on the lee side looking South
at a different Parnassus, hazy,

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a sketch of mountain
that could be cloud,

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and I wondered if the
gods there were also dead.

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A Lament.

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Out there beyond the porch
where my God country starts

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to get dense and godly, I am.

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That brown thrush is
me blasting it out

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in the woods, Omar Khayyam.

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In the sun, nude, oozing out to
the spruces, moss, fat beetles,

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stumps, boulders, I lie.

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Pretty soon I'll be immanent in
the firmament, with here a bit,

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there a bit, everywhere a
bit-bit, of me right by.

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But when the lugs from
the heavenly Poetry

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Society gathering up their far
flung warbler blokes to my woods

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come, they won't find much
but some undone verse,

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some old smokes,
and an empty chair

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by a desk in an empty room.

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Fourth day.

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I had just one match.

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I lighted the Sterno with it
and a cigarette and made coffee.

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And craftily shut the
Sterno down to a thin flame,

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and went to the desk
and smoked a cigarette,

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and finished the
coffee, made busy,

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and reached for a cigarette, and
went to the Sterno flame: out.

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With the matches a mile
away and no other God up,

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my old trivial life
swept in like a mist.

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I fretted an hour,
paced, kept looking

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for matches, then patted early
to breakfast, found matches.

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Somebody was impelled,
over her poached egg,

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to play out with
gestures the drama

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of climbing the Matterhorn.

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I backed out away from
that, back to the cabin,

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and smoked, smoked.

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The mountains were hidden,
the trees stood stony,

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a thousand strong; so the
shrubs; and the grass,

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even the grass, each frail dry
blade was fixed as if behind

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glass with a card in front of
it: "of the order Gramimae."

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Was this the Peabody Museum?

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Where was the guard?

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I remembered there a wax Indian,
loincloth and tomahawk, 'twas I,

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but now wearing shorts,
waving a cigarette.

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What would my card say?

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"Of the order Americanus
Parnassianus; ranged narrowly;

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is extinct though still living
near Crotched Mountain quietly."

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The fifth day.

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On the first day the first
God made great whales

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and creeping things.

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I got up late with a head
and barely made breakfast

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and sat in my cabin still
fuzzy from too much beer,

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wondering what I
was doing there.

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The mountains were clear,
the air had a rinsed look,

00:12:24.970 --> 00:12:27.700 align:middle line:90%
but the land was dry, unchanged.

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I was still in the museum.

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My wife and children
were half a country away.

00:12:33.520 --> 00:12:37.270 align:middle line:84%
The sun kept tearing
around in the empty sky.

00:12:37.270 --> 00:12:38.860 align:middle line:90%
I was 45.

00:12:38.860 --> 00:12:40.420 align:middle line:90%
I was old.

00:12:40.420 --> 00:12:43.840 align:middle line:90%
I wanted to cry.

00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:44.520 align:middle line:90%
Sixth day.

00:12:44.520 --> 00:12:47.460 align:middle line:90%


00:12:47.460 --> 00:12:51.960 align:middle line:84%
On the sixth day after
coffee, I made man.

00:12:51.960 --> 00:12:55.950 align:middle line:84%
I made him hairy, tan,
middle-aged, arrogant.

00:12:55.950 --> 00:13:00.270 align:middle line:84%
I gave him warts, colds,
wit, phobias, woman.

00:13:00.270 --> 00:13:03.420 align:middle line:84%
I put books in his hands and
taught him to drive, dance,

00:13:03.420 --> 00:13:05.580 align:middle line:90%
lie with woman.

00:13:05.580 --> 00:13:08.430 align:middle line:84%
I put him out in the sun
under Crotched Mountain,

00:13:08.430 --> 00:13:11.410 align:middle line:90%
and I looked at him.

00:13:11.410 --> 00:13:15.180 align:middle line:84%
He was well-made, would get
on, he would sleep poorly

00:13:15.180 --> 00:13:18.330 align:middle line:84%
at night as he got older,
would forget people's names,

00:13:18.330 --> 00:13:22.290 align:middle line:84%
misquote things, drink too much,
rage at woman at breakfast,

00:13:22.290 --> 00:13:24.270 align:middle line:90%
lose keys.

00:13:24.270 --> 00:13:27.900 align:middle line:84%
With bankers he'd
be ill at ease.

00:13:27.900 --> 00:13:30.630 align:middle line:84%
But he'd work hard, and make
money, and pay his taxes,

00:13:30.630 --> 00:13:32.280 align:middle line:84%
and vote for the
school bond issue,

00:13:32.280 --> 00:13:34.590 align:middle line:84%
and love woman, and
take children to zoos

00:13:34.590 --> 00:13:36.390 align:middle line:90%
and wear tweeds.

00:13:36.390 --> 00:13:38.680 align:middle line:90%
He was well made.

00:13:38.680 --> 00:13:40.720 align:middle line:90%
I looked at him.

00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:44.490 align:middle line:84%
He was sitting out on the
steps of a cabin in shorts.

00:13:44.490 --> 00:13:46.380 align:middle line:90%
He had no mark on him.

00:13:46.380 --> 00:13:49.260 align:middle line:84%
His body was firm,
he was muscular,

00:13:49.260 --> 00:13:53.220 align:middle line:84%
his hair was still black, yet
the eyes and mouth and flesh

00:13:53.220 --> 00:13:56.220 align:middle line:84%
of the cheeks and
forehead were old.

00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:58.678 align:middle line:84%
He looked out across
ages, like a saurian.

00:13:58.678 --> 00:14:05.660 align:middle line:90%


00:14:05.660 --> 00:14:06.560 align:middle line:90%
What had I made?

00:14:06.560 --> 00:14:09.260 align:middle line:90%


00:14:09.260 --> 00:14:12.710 align:middle line:84%
I went in the cabin and worked,
but could only think of him.

00:14:12.710 --> 00:14:15.860 align:middle line:84%
The afternoon came on,
no wind, no motion.

00:14:15.860 --> 00:14:18.230 align:middle line:90%
Whatever I did he was there.

00:14:18.230 --> 00:14:21.080 align:middle line:84%
The hours passed, and
I wrote these things.

00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:24.080 align:middle line:84%
I wrote these words, and
evening crept in the cabin.

00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:26.690 align:middle line:84%
And a hush came over things
and the sky darkened,

00:14:26.690 --> 00:14:31.700 align:middle line:84%
and I sat in the cabin with
him, and he sang My age at night

00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:36.440 align:middle line:84%
lay sleepless, my old
one hunting me, escaped.

00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:40.400 align:middle line:84%
The windows and door beckoned,
the still paths beckoned,

00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:43.340 align:middle line:84%
that I lie in my dark
lair breathing, itching,

00:14:43.340 --> 00:14:46.886 align:middle line:84%
aging, and the old
one will not leave me.

00:14:46.886 --> 00:14:49.430 align:middle line:90%
I, Esquire.

00:14:49.430 --> 00:14:53.120 align:middle line:90%
I sleep for the old one.

00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:54.780 align:middle line:90%
I watched him sleep.

00:14:54.780 --> 00:14:59.840 align:middle line:84%
At last I got up and left,
left the cabin to him.

00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:03.530 align:middle line:90%


00:15:03.530 --> 00:15:05.950 align:middle line:90%
Seventh day.

00:15:05.950 --> 00:15:08.000 align:middle line:90%
There then was the world.

00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.370 align:middle line:90%
The man surveyed it.

00:15:10.370 --> 00:15:13.852 align:middle line:84%
He doubted it was his
duty to call it good.

00:15:13.852 --> 00:15:17.370 align:middle line:84%
He knew it to be but a
world like any other.

00:15:17.370 --> 00:15:22.250 align:middle line:84%
He knew that his God, now
resting, had made what he could.

00:15:22.250 --> 00:15:27.160 align:middle line:90%


00:15:27.160 --> 00:15:28.750 align:middle line:90%
Thank you very much.

00:15:28.750 --> 00:15:32.100 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:15:32.100 --> 00:15:57.153 align:middle line:90%