WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.890 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.890 --> 00:00:02.587 align:middle line:84% It's a pleasure for me to do something 00:00:02.587 --> 00:00:04.170 align:middle line:84% that will surprise myself a little bit 00:00:04.170 --> 00:00:07.560 align:middle line:90% by having someone suggest. 00:00:07.560 --> 00:00:09.497 align:middle line:90% And were you going to-- 00:00:09.497 --> 00:00:10.730 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:00:10.730 --> 00:00:11.230 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:11.230 --> 00:00:15.060 align:middle line:90% 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:20.120 align:middle line:84% The first poem, "History of My Heart," 00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:21.670 align:middle line:84% which in your case you have not got. 00:00:21.670 --> 00:00:25.600 align:middle line:90% 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:28.980 align:middle line:90% "The Figured Wheel. 00:00:28.980 --> 00:00:33.150 align:middle line:84% The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, 00:00:33.150 --> 00:00:39.430 align:middle line:84% over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. 00:00:39.430 --> 00:00:43.390 align:middle line:84% Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive 00:00:43.390 --> 00:00:46.900 align:middle line:84% and grinds the remains of the dead in the cemeteries, 00:00:46.900 --> 00:00:50.860 align:middle line:90% in unmarked graves and oceans. 00:00:50.860 --> 00:00:56.320 align:middle line:84% Sluiced by saltwater and fresh by pure and contaminated rivers, 00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:01.450 align:middle line:84% by snow and sand, it separates and recombine all droplets 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:02.500 align:middle line:90% and grains. 00:01:02.500 --> 00:01:05.470 align:middle line:84% Even the infinite subatomic particles 00:01:05.470 --> 00:01:08.020 align:middle line:84% crushed under the illustrated varying 00:01:08.020 --> 00:01:12.070 align:middle line:84% treads of its wide circumferential trek. 00:01:12.070 --> 00:01:15.010 align:middle line:84% Spraying flecks of tar and molten rock, 00:01:15.010 --> 00:01:19.030 align:middle line:84% it rumbles through the Antarctic station of American sailors 00:01:19.030 --> 00:01:22.540 align:middle line:84% and technicians and shakes the floors and windows 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:25.150 align:middle line:84% of whorehouses for diggers and smelters, 00:01:25.150 --> 00:01:28.930 align:middle line:84% from Bethany Pennsylvania to a practically nameless 00:01:28.930 --> 00:01:31.900 align:middle line:84% semi-penal new town in the mineral 00:01:31.900 --> 00:01:37.680 align:middle line:84% rich tundra of the Soviet northernmost settlements. 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:41.790 align:middle line:84% Artists illuminated with pictures and incised mottos 00:01:41.790 --> 00:01:47.190 align:middle line:84% taken from the 10,000 stories and the registry of true dramas. 00:01:47.190 --> 00:01:49.110 align:middle line:84% They hang it with colored ribbons 00:01:49.110 --> 00:01:51.810 align:middle line:90% and with bells of mini pitches. 00:01:51.810 --> 00:01:55.050 align:middle line:84% With paints and chisels and moving lights, 00:01:55.050 --> 00:01:57.390 align:middle line:84% they record on its rotating surface 00:01:57.390 --> 00:02:01.020 align:middle line:84% the elegant and terrifying doings of the inhabitants 00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:04.680 align:middle line:84% of the hundred Pantheon's of major gods disposed 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:09.389 align:middle line:84% at iconographic stations at hub spoke and concentric bands. 00:02:09.389 --> 00:02:17.090 align:middle line:84% And also the grotesque demigods, Hopi gargoyles, and Igbo dryads. 00:02:17.090 --> 00:02:20.900 align:middle line:84% They cover it with wind chimes and electronic instruments that 00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:25.370 align:middle line:84% vibrate as it rolls to make an all but unthinkable music so 00:02:25.370 --> 00:02:27.950 align:middle line:84% that the wheel hums and rings as it 00:02:27.950 --> 00:02:30.020 align:middle line:84% turns through the births of stars 00:02:30.020 --> 00:02:34.610 align:middle line:84% and through the dead world of bomb, fire blast, and fallout, 00:02:34.610 --> 00:02:37.880 align:middle line:84% where only a few doomed races of insects 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:41.120 align:middle line:90% fumble in the smoking grasses. 00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:45.980 align:middle line:84% It is Jesus oblivious to hurt, turning to give words 00:02:45.980 --> 00:02:47.270 align:middle line:90% to the unrighteous. 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:51.530 align:middle line:84% And it is also gargoyles feeding pig that without knowing it, 00:02:51.530 --> 00:02:55.370 align:middle line:84% eats a baby chick and goes on feeding. 00:02:55.370 --> 00:02:58.850 align:middle line:84% It is the empty armor of my seed clattering 00:02:58.850 --> 00:03:02.150 align:middle line:84% into the arrows of the credulous unbelievers, a metal 00:03:02.150 --> 00:03:05.090 align:middle line:84% suit like the lost astronaut revolving 00:03:05.090 --> 00:03:08.300 align:middle line:84% with his useless umbilicus through the cold streams, 00:03:08.300 --> 00:03:12.560 align:middle line:84% neither energy nor matter that agitate the cold cyclical dark, 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:16.090 align:middle line:90% turning and returning. 00:03:16.090 --> 00:03:18.400 align:middle line:84% Even in the scorched and frozen world 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:22.450 align:middle line:84% of the dead after the Holocaust, the wheel, as it turns out 00:03:22.450 --> 00:03:25.150 align:middle line:90% goes on accreting ornaments. 00:03:25.150 --> 00:03:27.940 align:middle line:84% Scientists and artists festoon it 00:03:27.940 --> 00:03:32.020 align:middle line:84% from the grave with brilliant toys and messages, 00:03:32.020 --> 00:03:35.620 align:middle line:84% jokes and zodiacs, tragedies conceived 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:38.080 align:middle line:84% from among the dreams of the unemployed 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:42.300 align:middle line:84% and the pampered, the listless and the tortured. 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:45.390 align:middle line:84% It is hung with devices, by dead masters 00:03:45.390 --> 00:03:48.810 align:middle line:84% who have survived by reducing themselves magically 00:03:48.810 --> 00:03:53.400 align:middle line:84% to tiny organisms, to wisps of matter, crumbs of soil, 00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:56.580 align:middle line:84% bits of dry skin, microscopic flakes, 00:03:56.580 --> 00:03:59.640 align:middle line:84% which is why they are called great in their humility that 00:03:59.640 --> 00:04:02.490 align:middle line:84% goes on celebrating the turning of the wheel 00:04:02.490 --> 00:04:07.110 align:middle line:84% as it rolls unrelentingly over a cow plodding through car traffic 00:04:07.110 --> 00:04:12.690 align:middle line:84% on a street in Yosh and over the haunts of Robert Pinsky's mother 00:04:12.690 --> 00:04:15.900 align:middle line:84% and father, and wife and children, 00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:20.130 align:middle line:84% and his sweet self, which he hereby unwillingly 00:04:20.130 --> 00:04:22.140 align:middle line:90% and inexplicably gives up. 00:04:22.140 --> 00:04:26.520 align:middle line:84% Because it is there, figured and prefigured in the nothing 00:04:26.520 --> 00:04:27.810 align:middle line:90% transfiguring wheel." 00:04:27.810 --> 00:04:32.110 align:middle line:90% 00:04:32.110 --> 00:04:35.340 align:middle line:84% Sort of comes out in one strand of that one. 00:04:35.340 --> 00:04:36.454 align:middle line:90%