Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

SPEAKER 1: Same audience. Same forms, too, most of them. It is a great pleasure to introduce again tonight the poet in residence [INAUDIBLE].

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 2: But I've brought some help tonight in the poetry of Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats and [? Giorgos ?] Seferis. But I will read some of the things I read last night, as well as one or two that I didn't read to you last night, unless there's some demands for repeat performance.

[LAUGHTER]

But we might have to. I'm generally asked when I have time to write poetry, and I talk to people like Robert [? Lowell. ?] They say, well, we don't know when you find time, but you ought to take a little more time.

[LAUGHTER]

It is something of a problem, [INAUDIBLE]. And I really haven't worked at all of these during the campaign. Some of them, I had around for some time. But one does feel the need, as I indicated last night, in the course of a political campaign, when you make a series of more or less of one-night stands in which you often give a speech that's very similar to the one you gave the night before, that there's a kind of relief in trying to back off and to write something a little bit more personal and in which the use of the language is somewhat more particular and somewhat more refined and somewhat more satisfying.

I read to you, last night, a poem-- I don't know whether it had a title or not. It was dedicated to Giorgos Seferis, who's a Greek poet who's recently been translated. He's a diplomat, which is different from being a politician. They had more time to write. And he has the reputation of being a very, very good poet.

If I can find what I wrote about him-- I'd like to read one of his poems, which was more or less basic to what I wrote about him. And [INAUDIBLE]. Mine was called "Jumping Ship," you may remember. It had to do with the US Constitution.

Seferis has a poem which he called in the manner of Giorgos Seferis in which he says-- or writes-- "Wherever I travel, Greece keeps wounding me. On Pelion beneath the chestnuts, the centaur's shirt slid through the leaves to wind about my body. As I climbed up the slope and the sea came after me, rising like mercury in a thermometer, until we found the mountain waters at [? Santorin ?] touching the sinking islands, hearing a pipe play somewhere on the pumice stone.

My hand was nailed to the gun whale by an arrow suddenly shot from the extreme end of departed youth. At Mycenae, I lifted up the great boulders and the treasures of the sons of Atreus and slept beside them in the Hotel Bel [? Helen. ?] They only left in the morning when Cassandra crowed with a cock hanging down from her black throat.

What are they after, all those people who suppose themselves to be in Athens? One comes from salamis and asked another. You've come, I imagine, from Concord square. Oh, no, replies the other, from the Constitution. I met old John there. He stood me to an ice."

Well, he goes on in somewhat that same spirit about the tourists and about Greece itself. And he finishes saying, "Whenever I travel, Greece keeps wounding me. Curtains of mountains, archipelagos, naked granite. They call the ship which travels Agony 937."

That's the Seferis poem. And I wrote on the base of that, and really reading of his other poems, not just that, but a poem called jumping ship, in which I say, "I signed on the Constitution for 67 days and 46 ports with wall-to-wall carpeting, clean and uniformed with [? Goren ?] for bridge, a good ship full of joy and forgetfulness, according to his [? Branson, ?] more than seaworthy, ignoring the Atlantic waves, nodding to the swells off Africa, somewhat too large for the Mediterranean, certainly for the Aegean.

Drawing too much for the pier, we stood off the coast. Then out of your land, from the ship Agony 937, out of your language in translation, you boarded us violently, crying of Greece and Giorgos Seferis. With the wounds of your country, you have wounded us. You have wounded us with the deep sound of women crying out of the centuries, with the shallow silence of the buried reeds.

You have wounded us with the fear of the broken oar marking the grave on the shore and with the unbroken despair of the harbors without ships. You have wounded us with the white of the almond trees and with the black of the burnt-out villages, and with the sweetness of the pomegranate and with the bitterness of the salt sea. You have wounded us with the weightless walking of women and with the burden of the marble heads and of the great stones. You have wounded us unto death and unto life. With 11 ports to go, I am jumping ship to sign on Agony 937."

That's the end of that [? one. ?] Now, Giorgos Seferis writes some rather good things. I've quoted part of one of his poems along the way in my campaign when people tell me what a great burden I'm carrying for the world. I like to be somewhat relieved of that. And Seferis wrote a poem called "Three Mules." And one of the mules-- I won't tell you about all of them. But one of the mules was carrying the Queen Eleanor. And as he was walking along, or as-- he slipped, the mule did, and Queen Eleanor fell and broke her neck and died.

And Seferis writes about it. In any case, there was a man standing along the road at the scene of her death, and she appears to him and says, here it was that my beast slipped, and this is the stone that broke my neck. And I gave up my soul victorious. I was full of the will of God, and that was too much weight for any beast to bear.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

And she said, do not forget this, and do not wrong the mule. [INAUDIBLE] give me that kind of benefit. I read a poem last night. I think I could repeat it tonight. It's written to a gossip columnist. I thought it bore some repeating, because I didn't explain it very much. I didn't think it needed to be explained. [? I just ?] was not necessary to apply to anyone, dead or living, as they say. Could be accidental.

But described her as Couturier mark, which means that she was very well-dressed save for straps that show at the shoulder and the slip below.

"And rippling like a spent snakeskin,

A fold of nylon at the shin.

She does the Australian crawl

Into the center of the hall,

And there, beneath the chandelier,

She tests the sonar of her ears.

Through lids half-closed against the light,

Her eager eyes search left and right.

When she enters, voices drop.

As she approaches, speakers stop.

Undeterred, she gathers the gossip as she goes,

Then [? clotho ?] [? lachesis ?] and [? Atropos, ?] [INAUDIBLE]

She combines spinning allotting and cutting the lines

Fierce yet futile, just short of hate,

She writes a column and calls it fate."

[APPLAUSE]

Then there are the poems that were printed in Life magazine. There was an explanation given that I really had written these because I was in Indiana, and it wasn't quite true. For some time, I'd had notes of this kind and been concerned about some rather distressing signs that one sees as he drives through the country.

The three that I wrote about I'll tell you about-- there are others that you see. There's one near St. Cloud at a motel which always seems to me rather sad. It says continental breakfast. I mean, you think of Paris-- or I [? don't ?] [? like ?] that.

[LAUGHTER]

You see signs like that in Iowa and Nebraska.

[LAUGHTER]

Rather sad sign, continental breakfast. And there are also motel signs that say, come as you are. I always wondered how else you-- where [INAUDIBLE]. It seems like a kind of rejection.

[LAUGHTER]

And there are others as you look around. The three I wrote about-- and I read these again tonight-- were three bad signs. I don't know how much the audience here is repeating, but there's one was called-- it's the Green River ordinance. And the sign says, "The Green River ordinance enforced here. Peddlers not allowed."

This is an ordinance that was first passed in Green River, Wyoming, and its purpose was to protect the small town merchants from competition from peddlers. It was a rather celebrated case it went to the Supreme Court and was sustained. And after that, many small towns have enacted the Green River ordinance. And you see the sign saying "Green River ordinance enforced here, peddlers not allowed." this is not really a great poem [INAUDIBLE].

So this is-- the first bad sign is this "Green River ordinance enforced here, peddlers not allowed."

"This is a clean, safe town.

No one can just come round

With ribbons and bright thread

Or new books to be read.

This is an established place.

We have accepted patterns in lace

And ban itinerant vendors of new forms and worlds

And all things that turn the heads of girls

We are not narrow, but we live with care.

[LAUGHTER]

Gypsies and hawkers and minstrels are all right for the fair,

But transient peddlers nuisances, nuisances, we say,

From Green River must be kept away.

Traveling preachers, actors with a play,

Can pass through but may not stay.

Phoenicians, Jews, men of Venice,

Know that this is the home of Kiwanis.

All you who have been around the world to find beauty in small things

Read our sign and move on."

And the second bad sign was one called mixed drinks. And I explained this also. It's a sign that you see in tavern windows quite often. But nearly always, if it's a tavern in the gateway district of a town near the cheap hotels, where the rather beaten down men, live it always puzzled me somewhat that they would advertise mixed drinks because, it didn't seem to me that this is the kind of drink that most of these people would want.

But I think it has some meaning. And so I wrote this. Says,

"Mixed drinks

What mystery blinks

As in the blood of the neon sign

The uncertain hearts of the customers are tested

There in the window, embolism after embolism,

Repeating mixed drinks between the art movie and the reasonable rate hotel

Mixed drinks are class.

Each requires a different glass.

Mixed drink is Manhattan red

Between the adult movie and the unmade bed.

A mixed drink could be a daiquiri green between the gospel mission

And the sheen of hair oil on the rose-planted paper.

Mixed drinks

An interruption between the vicarious sin

And the near-empty bottle of gin.

A mixed drink is remembrance between unshaded

40-Watt bulbs hung from the ceiling

Between the light a man cannot live by in the better darkness

Mixed drink is the sign of contradiction."

And the third bad sign is this one of the mortuary. There are lots of bad signs for mortuaries around the country if you watch, especially in Los Angeles. I was struck with the fact that-- well, there are lots of bad signs there. Most every sign tells you to be something other than what you are, to be different. If you're-- either you're too fat, they want to make you thin, or you're too thin, they want to make you fat, or they want you to have a bigger car or move faster.

Excepting the signs for Forest Lawn, which are the only signs that offer any consolation or self-realization or any kind of order or stability. And so this is a combination of the Forest Lawn sign, one that advertises foreverness. Here in Minnesota, they advertise perpetual care, which is not quite the same as foreverness. Catholic cemeteries usually say perpetual care and the others say foreverness.

[LAUGHTER]

Question for the theologians to work on, I think. I could have Dr. McGill do it. But there's a sign in Saint Paul. That's a firm that has two Irish names, and they seem to have gotten the reputation that they would not conduct funerals for anyone excepting Irish and Catholics. So they put up a sign which says-- what was that sign? We serve all faiths. [INAUDIBLE] their sign. It's a large sign.

And what I wrote was,

"We serve all faiths

We the morticians

[? Tobias ?] is out

He has had it

We do not bury the dead

Not he died and was buried in after three days of rose,

But he died was revived, and after three days, was buried alive

This is our scripture.

Do not disturb the established practitioner.

Do not disturb the traditional mortician.

Giving fans to the church for hot days,

Dropping a calendar at the nursing home,

A pamphlet in the hospital waiting room,

And add to the testimonial brochure at the retirement banquet.

Promising the right music, the artificial grass, we bury faith of all kinds."

And then it says foreverness does not come easily. The rates should be higher.

[LAUGHTER]

I finished those poems in Indiana. I hadn't really started them there. And one that was in Life magazine that I didn't read last night-- I didn't have it here-- it was kind of a reminiscence on childhood. I talked about it a little bit last night. And some people said it's somewhat in the mood-- I don't quite say the style-- but of Dylan Thomas, and some of his lyrics, like "Fern Hill," when he describes his experiences as a very young man. I was going to read a little bit of Thomas, but perhaps I shouldn't. The contrast might be too much for me.

So want to be careful as to which poets try to compare your own-- or yourself with as you go along the way. But he has, in "Fern Hill," which I think is probably the greatest lyric of its kind-- at least modern lyric-- I'll just read a little bit of his because of the mood of it.

Well, he says,

"Now, as I was young, and easy under the apple boughs,

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the [? Dingle ?] starry,

Time let me hail and climb golden the heyday of his eyes.

And honored among wagons, I was prince of the apple towns.

And once below a time, I lordly had the trees and leaves trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

As I was green and carefree, famous among the barns,

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

And the sun, it is young only once.

Time let me play and be golden in the mercy of his means.

And green and golden, I was huntsman and herdsman.

The calves sang to my horn.

The foxes on the hill barked clear and cold

And the Sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long, it was running.

It was lovely, the hayfields high as the house,

The tunes from the chimneys.

He was there and playing lovely and watery in the fire green as grass

And the nightly under the simple stars.

As I [? rode ?] to sleep, the owls were burying the farm away.

All the moon long, I heard blessed among stables,

The nightjars flying with the [? ricks ?] and the horses flashing into the dark

And then awoke-- and then to awake in the farm like a wanderer white with the dew

Come back the cock on his shoulder, it was all shining.

It was Adam and maiden.

The sky gathered again, and the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light in the first spinning place,

The spellbound horses walking warm out of the whinnying green stable onto the field of praise."

Well, it goes on beyond that. And mine is not that good, but it's in somewhat the same mood, kind of reflection on the end of boyhood, the beginning of, really, of time, which I think marks the point of change. This is called "The Daytime Begin."

"Our days were yellow and green.

We marked the seasons with respect, but spring was ours.

We were shoots and sprouts and [? gleanings. ?]

We heard the first word that fish were running in the creeks.

Secretive, we went with men into sheds for torches and tridents, for nets and traps.

We shared the wildness of that week in men and fish.

First fruits after the winter, dried meat gone, the pork barrel holding only brine.

Bank clerks came out in skins and teachers in [INAUDIBLE]

While game wardens drove in darkened cars, watching the vagrant flares beside the fish mad streams

Or crouched at home to see who came and went,

Holding their peace, surprised by violence.

We were spendthrift of time.

A day was not too much to spend to find a willow right for a whistle

To blow the greenest sound the world has ever heard.

Another day to search the oak and hickory thickets,

Geometry and experience run together to choose the fork fit for a sling.

Whole days long, we pursued the spotted frogs,

And dared the curse of newts and toads.

New atoms, unhurried, pure.

We checked the names given by the old.

Some things we found well-titled, bloodroot and skunks,

Yarrow for sound and mallow for touch.

Some we found ill-named, too little or too much, or in a foreign tongue.

And these we challenged with new names.

Space was our preoccupation.

Infinity, not eternity our concern.

We were strong on counting--

The railroad ties, so many to a mile,

The telephone poles,

The cars that passed,

And measuring how far is far.

The sky was a kite.

I flew it on a string, winding it in to see its blue again

To count the whirling swallows and read the pattern scroll of blackbirds turning

To check the markings of the hawk

And then letting it out to the end of the last pinched inch of string and the vice of thumb and finger.

One day, the string broke.

The kite fled over the shoulder of the world.

But reluctantly, reaching back in great lunges, as lost kites do,

Or as a girl running in a reverse movie,

As at each arch step, the Earth set free, leaps forward, catching her farther back,

A treadmill doubly betraying remote and more remote.

But now I lie on a west-facing hill in October,

The dragging string having circled the world.

The universe crosses my hand in the grass.

I do not grasp it.

It brushes my closed eyes.

I do not open,

For that world is no longer mine but for remembrance.

Space ended then and time began."

[APPLAUSE]

Then I think I recited a religious poem last night about the Reverend Malcolm Boyd. I don't know whether I should do that again.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

What?

Yes. Yes.

Well this was a combination of the Reverend Malcolm Boyd in his book called Are You Running with Me, Jesus, plus a number of articles that have been printed about how everybody is jogging, everybody is running, a story that said that Billy Graham runs wherever he is, about Senator [? Preasmyer ?] running 10 miles a day and Governor Romney-- he was then a candidate-- running every morning, and other people all running and jogging in Reverend Malcolm Boyd's book.

So the poem was something like this, that,

Are you running with me, Jesus,

Asked the Reverend Malcolm Boyd.

May I explain and ask the same,

But I'm not matching stride with Billy Graham [INAUDIBLE]

He was running in England then.

I'm not going for distance with the senator's persistence.

I'm not even keeping pace with George Romney in his race.

I'm an existential runner.

[LAUGHTER]

Indifferent to space, I'm just running here in place,

[LAUGHTER]

Wall to wall, unceasing, the treadmill carpet flows,

Baseboard to baseboard, unending, from the looms of Mohawk.

As I run against the clock, are you running with me, Jesus, or not?

That's the end of that.

[APPLAUSE]

Let's see.

AUDIENCE: Deer hunt.

SPEAKER 2: What was that? You want the deer the hunting of the deer? I don't know, that's kind of a [? bad ?] poem. Well, that-- as I explained it, a lot of things went into that, the reports of some persons who-- a person who had a ranch and invited people to come down and shoot deer. And after that happened, he would have the head mounted and would have it delivered to the person who had done the shooting. And then, also, the meat was made into sausage and also sent to the person, who then ordinarily distributed it to other people. It was distributed.

And there were also stories about how people were discouraged from frightening the deer so they'd be relatively quiet. And the poem is really a series of people asking questions, really, or talking-- and it starts in this way. It says,

"Gentle the deer with solicitude.

Solace them with salt.

Comfort them with apples.

Prepare them for the rectitude of man,

Who will come,

A stranger with the unfamiliar gun."

Then it changes, and the watcher-- it says,

"The Watcher calls and trusts the head turned

Between the antlers, Saint Hubert's cross burns.

No conversions today, but quick shot.

The buck drops to his knees in decent genuflection to death while the doe flees."

And then the watcher speaks. He says,

"He is not dead.

He will arise in three weeks.

The head will look out of the wall, but with changed eyes.

And then the question is,

But what of the body of lightness and swiftness of a witness?

And the witness, the watcher, replies,

He says ground, together heart and muscle,

Intestinal cased and tied with gristle.

A sausage sacrament of communion

That all may share the guilt of one under the transplanted eyes of the watcher."

That's not a very nice poem, [INAUDIBLE].

I think really the really good poems are something-- I want to read one from or two from William Butler Yeats, I think, which shows a kind of wonderful quality that he has. I mean, I don't have to make a case for him. If I can find it. This is one of his shorter poems. I think it's in here. [INAUDIBLE].

He's one of Robert McNamara's favorite poems-- or poets. It's not one of his favorite poems, as far as I know. I don't know. I may not have it in here. It's a poem entitled "The Sorrows of Love." I may not have it in this collection. I thought I did. Let me-- I'm sorry, I thought I had it.

Well, I don't have the one that I wanted. The important thing about it is that, just by a slight change in the second stanza, everything he said in the first stanza becomes changed in the third stanza, but I'll read one that I rather like. It's called "Politics" by Yeats. And he always was mixing-- well, he didn't really mix in much politics, but he worried about politics in Ireland. And this is one. He quotes from Thomas Mann.

"'In our time,' Mann said, 'the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.'"

This was Thomas Mann speaking with a German accent. And Yeats said,

"How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fixed on Roman or on Russian or on Spanish politics?

But here's a traveled man that knows what he talks about,

And there's a politician that has read and thought.

Maybe what they say is true of war and war's alarms,

But oh, that I were young again and held her in my arms."

That was the Yeats view of Thomas. A rather heavy position taken by Thomas Mann. Well, there are one or two, I think, rather lighter things that I have around in this notebook that I'd read to you. And then I'll have an end to this.

Sort of thing you write along the way. One of these I wrote in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the Democratic regional meeting. It was called "Ambition in Rapid City."

[LAUGHTER]

It was when I was deciding to run for the presidency. It was terrible. It was in the fall, and very-- in Rapid City in South Dakota, the fall is a season of one color. It's a kind of a clay color, kind of yellow everywhere. And this is just really just descriptive. It didn't say very much says.

"Sumac singed in the slant sun,

Tumbleweed and thistle,

Scant green gone,

And the fear of old thigh bones brittle in the cold.

On each hill, a last Indian sits,

Looking straight West through saffron slits,

Reading his blood paler and paler,

Exile,

While the parched snakes wait for the first thin due

To slake their day-old thirst.

The coyote cries in the sudden night,

And from stars dead a million years,

Light on the yellow leaves of cottonwood

Shows that beneath the iron bridge,

The Black River is and flows."

Then I wrote one in Nebraska. We were driving from Omaha to Lincoln on election day, and there was no place to walk in Nebraska until we found an old railroad track and we walked down the right of way. And this has a kind of romantic ending here that I don't know whether I should read it to you or not. [LAUGHTER]

Just had to fill it out anyway. But it was called "Right of Way," which you know is the railroad. And it's rather an interesting space. I said if I were president, we were going to declare it a sanctuary so that anyone who got to the right of way would be safe from the law.

[LAUGHTER]

Not safe in churches or any other place.

[LAUGHTER]

So this is something of the spirit. It says,

"Here, you find no counted seeds nor calculated crops,

Only the most wanted weeds,

Nettles and great thistles and burdocks,

And exiles, expatriates from pots and box,

Gypsy plants despising rose,

Alien corn unhelped by hose,

Asters and lupin, sumac and thorn,

Strange plants, too, of no fame

Which country Adams across the fence look at as though forbidden knowledge and refuse to name,

Free and not free

And never again to be free.

And in this sanctuary, I thought of you,

As in other places, too, I do,

And reach seeking a hand in what all the joints of my arm parting,

And at last drew back my hand bled by the rasp of harsh grass.

And then with a reed made of a bitter blade, I blew three notes

Of love and thought of how if you were there

I would stretch your hair in the wind and hear through it

The harping of all the wild songs of Ireland."

That was not bad in Nebraska, I thought, but.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

It didn't make losing the primary so bad. I'm going to write about the morning after-- it really-- it wasn't sad, but the morning after in a suite when everyone is gone, you come in and you see one of the saddest thing are shrimp that have been ignored.

[LAUGHTER]

[? Daylight ?] when you see them floating in the bowl. And it's even worse. I was thinking of this today, about that new holy water that we're going to make out of that glacial ice that was described today, that floating in water that has been iced the night before is somewhat undignified. Even shrimp look worse in water that was iced the night before. And I just don't know about that new holy water. I mean, I sort of-- using that glacial ice and sending it to Rome with the chaplain of the Naval Academy-- maybe you haven't read about that. It's one of the issues I'm going to raise for my vice presidential candidature.

[LAUGHTER]

That and the question of the bones of Saint Peter. We're going to--

[LAUGHTER]

I think I'll just read this one more of-- this is written about the Dulles Airport in Washington. If any of you have-- no one flies into it, but it's a wonderful piece of architecture. It was done by Saarinen. It's a little bit like the monstic church. It was built out of its time. Well, anyway, it's very good to look at. It's there in Virginia. And this combines a number of things, kind of the idea of the Garden of Eden and detachment and time and a lot of things like that, if you can pick them out.

"Detatched by Saarinen and God from all coordinates,

It sits like a gull upon water, defying the subtle archimedean rule.

The Earth flows under without displacement.

Now, at midnight, no arrivals or departures scheduled,

Planes and pilots are dismissed, ticket-takers and stewardesses sleep.

In this, the last measured place of the world, we come each a half 200 yards

From shadow to form, from form to person,

To meet in the range of each other's sight.

Into this innocence of light no eye of the myriad-eyed mankind dares look.

Let us dance, slowly turning.

We are seen by the immodest, unblinking, snake-eyed electric beam.

The doors open outward, not driven,

But drawn by darkness we go now naked into the unnumbered waiting eon."

It's a kind of modern problem. And I think maybe I'd better stop at that point. I've got one or two that really aren't ready for anyone to hear. Maybe you could say the same about what I've read to you.

[LAUGHTER]

I did read one last night. I think maybe I can finish on that. It's a little better. I think of myself as Piers [? Plowman, ?] who said he was weary in the world too weak to work. And this explains politics and poets. This is a-- I read this last night, but it was kind of an equinoctial poem. In the spring equinox this year.

"Whose foot is on the treadle that turns the burning stars

Has spun the whole world halfway round

Since last I called come down, come down.

The stars that in September looked through the mournful rain

Now set their sight again upon an Earth half-dark, half-light.

The men of distant years have said that much depends on changing seasons,

On solstices and equinox, and they have given reasons.

I disagree.

Too much occurs by inadvertence or what seems to be

An accident of hand or knee,

A chance sunrise, a glance of eyes,

Whether the wind blows and which way the river flows,

And other things that come and go regard for season or for reason.

But just in case they might be right,

On this strange night

That marks the end of winter's fall

For lifting help, again I call."

So thank you [? very ?] [? much. ?]

[APPLAUSE]

[INTERPOSING VOICES]