(00:00:00) You have to be careful with introducing former presidential candidates. If you say too many things about them that are encouraging they might be moved to desperate action. I told some it's much harder to stop running for president than it is to start and I'm in a precarious position right now. In any case I had to be invited to speak here at the institute on I think on my own background some of the things that have gone in in some ways to my political experience, but more particularly into a number of essays and poems that were included in a book that was brought out last year called. Gene McCarthy of Minnesota, which was a somewhat arrogant title, but in the case of book titles, you have to hold the Publishers responsible. It's one of the things they insist that they know more about than the author and I really had proposed a somewhat more modest title than it was my Minnesota. But in any case they prevailed at that point that I found in a rather limited campaign last year that really wasn't mine at least not politically but the substance of the of the book is not that and I In keeping with the general theme of the of the grant would exhibition we talked about it's not really original characteristic, but it's a some of the marks of many people in Minnesota and I suppose that I too was marked by the experience of growing up in a small town in Watkins. The general culture is not as our steers that would cease to be presented in Grant Woods paintings Watkins is in Meeker County. I may not know where it is, but it was one of the last counties to when we had local option on legal. Whiskey, it was one of the last to give up being dry. But we were saved from the austerity and the I suppose puritanism Calvinism of the Presbyterians who lived in Litchfield. Plus some Scandinavians who were rather more strict on that matter than you generally expect from Lutheran's we were saved by the fact that Watkins is only about two miles from Stearns County. And I think Stearns County is the most German county in the United States and the they not only didn't have to vote wet. I mean they had never accepted prohibition. So we started lived where the were these two aspects of culture clashed and we learned as a certain balance and understanding of differences in that advice. We also had another conflict there, which was not really religious particularity of accepting. It was between the Irish Catholics and the German Catholics. We did watch Protestants a little bit, but we didn't worry about them as much as we did about the German Catholics. They were they were a greater threat sort of survive that also and I would note I suppose four or five things part of the experience of growing up in in towel like Watkins and the Midwest and particularly Minnesota. These towns are scattered. As you know about every seven miles along the railroad when the Great Northern went through in the Northern Pacific and the Sioux Line on which Watkins is they established a town ready or not every seven miles whether it was on high ground or low. And then they named them and the names were quite random Eden Valley, you know, we ever see Eden Valley. There's no valley and there's no Eden. I mean it's a strange contradiction, you know, and Kimball and Watkins were having a named after I suppose they were engineers or construction Engineers. I don't think they ever named them after the railroad engineers and towns like Clontarf and Murdock which are Irish names and Avoca. The veil of a Volcom is out in Western Minnesota. It's probably the flattest country in you know in our state but someone had the memory at least I suppose of evoke I'm said, well, you know Valley or not. We'll call it a Voca and there was well every seven miles a standard was that at that time that if you had to go from From your farm to town in the course of a day and do some business that four and a half five miles was as far as you could go and get home again with a team of horses. And so seven miles you had a town and the other railroad would be about 20 miles south. So if you had to go to county seat while you could do it with any case these 45 sort of strands. I think that ran through that did make a difference. What a small town was about. One was it was always closely associated with with agriculture. One was that you? You really knew everybody in (00:05:56) town (00:05:58) and it wasn't just a question of knowing them in in current situation. But there was continuity you sort of knew what their who their ancestors were. And you were held really accountable for your ancestors and also for for your own descendants is here at least three generations. That's as long as anyone had lived in those towns because they were they were put up so you had it with sort of vertical and two dimensional anyway. And people would say if someone there was we thought in terms of livestock. There's a bad strain in his family. And this was used to be along the way. I don't want to get off on politics, but that helped me in dealing with Lyndon Johnson, but I actually knew more about cattle and he did which is tremendous advantage and one day he said if someone Reporter they said there's dwarfism in his family's (00:07:03) trained (00:07:05) pretty rough statement and people were concerned about some of they said what does that mean? You just you know, you know, I mean doesn't know door for his family and I said, oh it's about a four you have to know if Linden raised Hereford cattle. And if you get inbreeding in herefords, they begin to produce dwarf. So Linda just wanted to say there's you know, it's weakness him that I don't like and I think I was the only one the audience that knew what he was saying. And so that once you could do that with him, I want said that his barbecues didn't start out as barbecues. It was just branding parties that got out of control and you really have to watch those things because if you say things are rather obvious way people don't remember either they may remember that it was said, but they don't know who said it the danger is that if you say it in such a way they remember what it was said what was said in who said it that you re sort of have to answer for it. In any case the personalism was a mark of the small town and it was matter of knowing people and knowing about them. Secondly there was a very obvious Very necessary and inescapable relationship to Nature in the change of the seasons because you did live on the margins party was economic. Do you have good crops and so on but also even questions of survival in the wintertime so weather and the seasons and the natural environment was always very important. A third thing was I suppose kind of personal responsibility wasn't just a matter of knowing people but people had really rolled to their you expected them to fulfill and the reputations were either good or bad all the way from, you know, did could you trust the blacksmith? Or could you trust a horse trader and I will read you from one of my poems that deals with that some advice. I got from my father in dealing with horse Traders. I'd ever dealt with horse Traders literally, but I have dealt with people who would have qualified in another time and the advice of my father gave me at that time would have been good advice now and I suppose the first thing is is that you develop certain useful metaphors from that experience of the rural and small-town experience, which often times I said does come in at least as useful. Well the book on Minnesota I'd had in mind for a long time. I had written and published some other poetry, but it was not specifically related to, Minnesota. Some of it was out of a broader experience and really I'd always broader experience but a different experience more immediate, but I had in mind all the time sort of to write a series of poems about sort of trying to cover what I knew to be the things that in my father's lifetime it sort of happened in Minnesota and he was born in 1875 and and died in 1973. So if he'd lived two more years you would have would have been a century and that was a big part of you know, the history of the country I once told me when he was about 98 I said, you know, it's pretty impressive you've lived one-twentieth of the time since Christ. If you deal in fractions, you can you know, it's like and one-fortieth of the time since Abraham and its small fraction. It actually is a small fraction and but a significant number of years and for I say a large fraction rather is what I meant to say but to write about sort of the things that he'd experienced what had what had passed through his life in a way what he had to respond to an accept into to do it in poetry which there's some advantage in Porter you can condense it and it's really easier to be a fairly good poet than to be a very good writer of prose and if you're a politician you're pressed for time and you've sometimes have to take the the shorter way and I did have my to do that and and I began to write first about him and I will know you really have to go back and I started to understand the state the geology of it and I think I became. Most sensitive to that I when I got out of college, I taught school in tenth of Minnesota, which is in the Red River Valley and Winters are long there. And you could begin to understand really why the glacier stayed there as long as it did and sort of sense. It might come back the next day, you know, and you could be 20 feet of ice movie over you and the whole image of Lake Agassiz and now Lake Traverse and the place where the water there you always if you throw a bucket North it flows to the Hudson Bay View throwing South it flows in the Minnesota River to the Gulf of Mexico and you got to sort of got a sense of geology and I sort of started my series of poems that were principally about my father in in the geological age. Could I have the book recruitment? And this is sort of (00:13:10) Minnesota. (00:13:14) It's called Beginnings slow silent great and grind of glacial ice on Stone on Clay plowing beds for Rivers pushing over Hills gouging basins for Lakes a million years of waiting for the basalt land with cold winds whining over the ice case snow sauce cutting edges and lines telegraphing the in perceptible retreat in the sound of water dripping. Slow shrinking of the ice Shield the Beginning of rivers that would flow South and the rivers waiting to flow north scant grass among the stones and sphagnum Moss and the most timid of trees the Tamarack. And then the next stage is called sounds of Birds cry first a weasel shriek, then the guttural otter and the snow fox is bark Whispers of grass. the boom of Buffalo herds then the voices of men syllabic naming the land in Simplicity Wabasha. Manitoba Minnehaha Mankato skipping Stones hard for Flint arrowheads shaping red Sandstone soft for peace pipes and then a new sound singing Hennepin fraud attack Duluth the voyagers singing to the rhythm of their (00:14:44) oars. (00:14:47) And Skip on from that through well to the my own grandfather's both of whom came in shortly after (00:14:55) statehood. (00:14:57) One with Irish hands playing the fiddle for dances. Building houses and barns Bridges and trestles. We will set it embrace it and I will walk over it before it is nail. He said One grandfather with German hands of farmer of Miller set the millstones just right set the wheel to the Crow River flow. Blacksmith by need turning iron into Horseshoes and axis into plowshares and chains. And to Grandmother's one lost ever known nine children. She bore and died with the last the other I knew she crossed the Atlantic at 3 and died in protest at 96. Death while she would say uncalled (00:15:46) for (00:15:48) she could card wound spin it and nip toe and heel could cook potatoes eight ways at least and believed any illness would yield to eucalyptus tea and Brandy? That is sort of ran on from that. I'll do just one or two more the poem first one of my father. It's called old father. You have turned Corners that are forever gone. Born Into A wilderness of hopes meager in a past too long remembered and retold your father always winning old battles and lost Wars his fiddles primed for the dance. You were for work now at 96 you say when asked how your eyesight is every day is a little darker but it's not so bad. Most of the people I would like to see would not look as good as they did when I last saw them. But I would like to see how the cattle are doing. Well, they had to go on from that to Watkins and some of the experiences. They're there were I think we're sort of three cultural threads that ran through the town other than the response to Nature's I said one was baseball. Which was a very big thing. The second was a church and the third was the railroad other than that things were peripheral. We worried a great deal about baseball you started worrying about whether you'd make the team when you were about 11 and stayed on through it. The church was quite Central for a number of reasons, but in any case it was their religion, but it wasn't as a religious Force but rather as a cultural reality and the third was was the railroad track. And through this the people who acted out whatever was expected other than I have written poems that really relate to to all of these. First some of the person's I think who were involved in Watkins at the (00:18:04) time. (00:18:09) Well, let me read you the Ten Commandments that my father gave me that relate to the horse trader. It was don't lend money to the operator of the threshing (00:18:19) machine (00:18:21) to a traveling preacher. Did the man who plays the fiddle at the dance? To the header of the stud horse. To the operator of the Sorghum Mill. Don't trust a horse trader who carries a Bible along with the Bridle a man who gets up early in the morning before everyone else the dog. Warden the man who offered to cut your side of the hedge or one who walks too (00:18:49) fast. (00:18:52) These all have political application. I could name one or two persons who qualify on on each one of these points. (00:19:03) Let me see you get to the Watkins people. (00:19:07) First the rather long poem that I've written that sort of relates to our response to the seasons. It's called the day the time begin. And it says our days were yellow and green. We Mark the seasons with respect but spring was (00:19:26) ours. (00:19:28) We were shoots and sprouts and greetings. We heard the word that fish were running in the Stream. Secretive we went with man into sheds for torches and tridents for Nets and (00:19:42) Spears (00:19:44) Bank clerks came out and skins and teachers and loin clouds the promise of first fruits after the wintered dried meat gone the pork barrel holding only (00:19:56) brine. (00:20:04) The 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 greenish sound another day to search the Oak and Hickory thickets geometry and Experience run together to choose a fork fit for a sling hole 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. Foresight skunks for smell crab apples for Taste yarrow for sound mallow for touch some we found name deal 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 been on Counting. The railroad ties the cars that passed the telephone poles so many to a mile marking our growth against the door frames. The sky was a kite. I flew It On A String whining it in to see it's 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 in the vice of thumb and finger. One day the string broke and the kite fight 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. Is that each Arch step the Earth set free leaps forward catching her father back the treadmill doubly betraying remote and more remote. Now, I lie on a west-facing hill knocked over the dragging string having Circle 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 for space ended then and time (00:22:23) began. (00:22:30) That sort of takes care of the seasons. Let me read you one on baseball the really relates to my brother, but it was very important and I written about a long s in about the great Sioux League which involved about 20 towns in central, (00:22:49) Minnesota (00:22:54) My brother you always did it the hard way like your mother your father and mine said fighting bigger boys crying with your eyes shut but Brave our voices sound in the hollow culverts as we staggered through atlases holding the world on our rounded shoulders we hung from the apple trees. Like apes are ripe fruit with two stems playing catch for hours in the Sun for days for years. Tossing the ball back and forth. Try your fastball my brother a right-handed pitcher. Try me the first baseman with a low throw in the dirt. And one dealing with religion as I said, it was not it was not really theological or dogmatic. It was just one of the things that was there and we worried as I said about German Catholics that we also worried vaguely about Protestants and they didn't have a church that time but they still had the public school. And that was sort of where they it was their Center and we were warned against it. He also warned against the YMCA and the Boy Scouts, which was also a Protestant dominated and any case of we got over most of it and this poem is called the public school grounds. The diagonal dark path ran across the grounds false grass beside it grew the told all that it knew of everyone who passed of every lad and lasses who lay upon it in the night it ran beneath black walnut trees that each June deceived with Promises of meat then the Autumn held but dust and worm drilled holes Beyond its to the public school sealed summer Sepulchre of heresy. the coal Chute back in those who craved to know how learning lived behind locked doors and brave the seller dark wood creaking stairs to see pale blackboards books lying like poison pigeons on the floor husks of flies sucked dry by spiders and bees with pollen Laden thighs their Myriad eyes deceived by glass dead or dying on the window sills Temptation lurked in outdoor toilets padlock to preserve until September the janitorial purgation of sandpaper and plane leaving pale spots where once The Facts of Life were told And who loves whom? On still nights iron swings clanged in the calm dead children had come back to play old women said each boy at 12 was dared to walk at night the dark diagonal path not break and run each step. No faster than the first to prove to prove he could. And one related to the railroads I said the railroads were very important. It was it sort of punctuated the day. I mean there were two fliers at that time one called the Mountaineer and the other the Winnipeg flyer which went through about eight o'clock at night and it was it was part of the Great excitement of every day. It was (00:26:14) also (00:26:17) Well, it was a right away. We spent a lot of time on railroad tracks walking up and down and I think that felt then and since that the whole question of eminent domain is a very threatening thing in a free society and the railroads were the first to exercise and now we take it for granted. I try to get him to the airport the other day and it looks to me as though they've exercise eminent domain over all of Richfield either. They're Paving it. I mean I do we know where to go on the road. There was so much cement and all of it, you know laid open by eminent domain and so we walked the railroad tracks. There was a kind of a Different attitude towards property if you were on the railroad tracks on the right away. It was a question of whether it really belonged to the railroad company or not. And there was a kind of a rule saying if you're on the railroad tracks, you could throw rocks at the insulators on the telegraph pole. But if you were off the right away, you couldn't throw in but you could throw out this was there's one of those fine ethical distinctions that we made and there's also sort of the mystery of the of the plants that grew within what we call the right away. There were strange plants there things that had fallen off the trains and no one quite knew what they were and I I did write a poem called right away. About the soo line right away. (00:27:50) She should be here. (00:27:54) But here you find no counted crops. Now counted seeds are calculated crops only the most Wanted weeds Nettles great thistles and Burdock's with Exiles and expatriates from pot and box Gypsy plants despising Rose. Alien corn on helped by hose Asters Lupin soup sumac and Thorn and stranger plants of no Fame which country atoms across the fence. Look at as a Forbidden Knowledge and refused to name. And then two or three poems to deal with is with persons. As I said persons were very important in the context. He sort of knew them all and I written about eight or ten of them I guess but I'll it's not really a spoon River Anthology had a whether we had the right kind of people for that or or whether I wasn't didn't know enough about them to write but I picked out two or three one is is been krypter the blacksmith and we stopped has been shop going home from school. Usually at noon again at night says Vulcan at your Forge muscle bear arms gloves and leather apron you dealt in Fire and iron plowshares and chains Galaxy spun from your grinding wheel comets and shooting stars out of coke when the Bellows turd the scream of metal in tempering water the smell of burnt bone there in the Gloom the red hot shoe on Whose horses monsters held on three legs as you held the fourth quickly snatched from the floor there between your knees. And set the nails and clench them. I wrote this I think is a good poem. It was criticized by someone who didn't understand it's called a Litany of the Saints and others that were simply a listing of the names of people who live there and give you a few. This is if these are the female saints Matilda up 0 v'n many cost. Lucinda Missler Verena britches, Anastasia ducking door Lucille hookin pillar Mercedes Meyer Hofer the alkyl tea and Cleo kritzky Eva Werner Louise Heinrich citing the Shen occur Miss Vause in the piano teacher meryton, the milliner and sisters on Scylla Lucetta Eucharistic saying held in a dicta and Florence an alga and Evelyn Eckland. My cousin's Esther Rita and Rose and Evelyn Margaret and on silat Ice. They're all good people deserve to be mentioned. This ball is called The Wild Honey man's name was Charlie chausson. There are always a few people around they said well, he's part Indian and they usually said you could tell because they walked sort of pigeon toe. That was the evidence and so we believe that and so anyone who didn't know much about his pigeon toed. They said he's part Indian it was And it was sort of accepted and there was a man named Joe Ron Greenwood who my right about here is a greatest woodchopper and he walked that way and was said to be an Indian and Charlie sjostad. But anyway, Charlie was the Wild Honey man. He would come in the fall his jars filled with the richness. He had taken from bees from the hard places in the hollow trees at the edge of the woods bees had plowed the Clover wrestled and tumbled and flowers and laid their Harvest not random in wax, but in measured hexagonal bins, he knew what he had by taste and by smell you would like a mild Basswood for the brown Taste of Buckwheat or the taste of thistle Bloom and he would say here it is. and one poem to my cousin Lorraine she was Play the piano at the silent movies which distinguished her in the community. I mean she played very well and this is a testimonial to her. They said they were older cousins and she was one noted as her brother Fred who had driven an ambulance in World War (00:32:24) two (00:32:26) people seeing a cloud of dust on a country road behind a car said Here Comes Fred. She was the best piano player in the county for sure. That was the reach of our knowledge though some held there was none better even in Minneapolis. She played for the silent movies out of a small circle of light from a gooseneck lamp there flowed from her fingers. Joy and sorrow love and hate War and Peace storms and serenity and sometimes she played in the dark. Well that sort of takes care of the people I guess. Somewhat broader experience in the state which I think is a things that have affected all of us. This is not just what genes although some of it. Is there a poem called three bad (00:33:25) signs? (00:33:31) The first bad sign is Green River Ordinance and forced here. No Peddlers allowed. If you I think the small town still have these signs that said Peddlers ordinance enforced or shipping. No Peddlers allowed. It was a an ordinance that was first passed in Green River, Wyoming. I think in the Depression was supposed to protect the people on Main Street from unfair competition. (00:33:56) And (00:33:58) assign was there the first bad sign is this Green River Ardent enforced here. No Peddlers 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 world's all things that turn the heads of girls. We are not narrow but we live with care gypsies Hawkers and minstrels are all right for a fair but transition Peddlers nuisances. We say from Green River must be kept away traveling preachers and actors with the play may pass through but may not stay Phoenicians Jews men of Venice know that this is the home of Kiwanis. (00:34:52) This is (00:34:52) terrible to do that to you through all that just for one off rhyme actually. It has three more lines because all you have been around the world to find truth or beauty and small things read our sign and move on. The second bad sign is mixed drinks and this is not our small towns. But sort of what we used to have the end of Hennepin Avenue and still confined and you wonder why and it's not just Midwest but it's where I experience it first why they have mixed drinks in the window of those saloons because you sure that nobody bought a mixed drink inside. They were pretty straight Drinkers and gin and wine. There's mixed drinks what mystery blinks as in the thin 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 rates hotel. Mixed race your class each requires a different glass. A mixed drink is Manhattan read between the adult movie in the unmade bed? A mixed drink is Daiquiri green between the Gospel Mission and the sheen of hair oil on Rose planted paper mixed drink is forgiveness between vicarious sin and the half empty bottle of gin mixed drink is Remembrance between unshaded 40 watt bulbs hung from the ceiling and the better Darkness mixed drinks is a sign of contradiction. And the third (00:36:29) one (00:36:34) is a mortician (00:36:35) sign. (00:36:37) This one was in Saint Paul said we serve all faiths and it was put up at the beginning of the ecumenical movement. Sort of an opening. I think it was O'Halloran and Murphy they wanted to prove that they were moving with the times and this is what it says that we serve all faiths. We the morticians Tobias is out. He has had it. We do not bury the dead not he died was buried and after three days a rose, but he died was revived 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 taking an ad in the testimonial brochure at the retirement banquet. promising the right music the artificial grass We bury faith of all kinds forever to stand not come easily. The rate should be higher and this was noted in a morticians (00:37:53) journal (00:37:56) and I never do what they just said. They thought maybe they should rethink their profession and I never found out what they had in mind, but you never know when when the Palm will have some impact. This poem is called good daddy Hall and I don't think it (00:38:13) Minneapolis. (00:38:17) You would remember good daddy. Hobby was rather well known in in st. Paul. He was it was black man, and he ran an after-hours club for the people on Rondo the for the black folks where they got the says. She the same things you could get at the Athletic Club if you were well connected or the Minnesota Club. And it seemed fair enough, but they would arrest him every so often a matter of fact. He seconded my nomination for congress. I didn't know who he was. I recognized that I was chairman I said and he turned around was a good speech and I asked someone who is he and he said well, it's good. Daddy Hall. He's been arrested 65 times and so he remained my friend for a long time and finally years later. There was a story that he'd been arrested again. And I think they had a reform mayor, you know something they didn't often have in st. Paul and they judge her or a bad judge who said we give you choice you can leave town or it's six months in the workhouse what he'd ever been sentenced to you no more than two weeks, and he said that he would leave town he accept Exile and but before he did he was down at the bus station. He had a nice called Sybil who came for him from Waterloo, Iowa. And he made a speech at the Trailways bus depot before he left and this poem is sort of a description of that and some of the words said when good daddy Hall left town under a judge's orders. He chewed knapweed out of one corner of his mouth. He stood tall at the Trailways Depot right there with the magazine racks and the rainbow oil stains. A blaze in the butt end of rhetoric. He personally rolled he was a politician. He said leaving don't hurt I go on. He said there used to be good whiskey cheap and st. Paul they used to be gambling easy everything syncs. You are like that in a kind of litany and nobility that Dottie would have envied then he slumped because the bus was nowhere in sight. He raised a hand like gray smoke. It dropped empty roads. He said his knee civil from Waterloo Iowa said pick up your suitcase Adam. Here comes the bus. He did Adam. She had said. We thought it was irony. It was just his (00:41:07) name. (00:41:10) And that was a rather sad day one of my fide know what I might have stopped the the exile. one or two poems that deal with the sort of things in nature in Minnesota that Mark parts of the state and I think we have to acknowledge these things do have an effect upon this day. This is called the Tamarack tree and it was sort of an accidental poem. I got most of it out of the Department of Agriculture forestry guide you never know where you'll find Paul's was a description of the Tamarack tree and I was flying over Wisconsin with Robert Lowell and I said, that's a Tamarack tree and I told you about he said well, that's what you write that down. It's a poem I said, well I took it out of the Part of Agriculture yearbook. He said find a poem any place claim it. He said just take it. They don't belong to anyone anyway, and so I did and It's rather simple poses. The Tamarack tree is the saddest tree of all it's the first to invade the swamp and when it makes the soil dry enough the other trees kill it. He's very much abused. It cannot grow in shade is put upon by parasitical growth, which is broom and the dwarf mistletoe. And this poem called the hair and I I say I first sort of since I was going to write it Farm Island Lake and I never quite never knew what the poem it was. I thought a large you to script you to Gloria Steinem interpreted said it explain me and I was relieved at least that there were so many explanation. I hadn't known it but it says the Heron comes before the light has quite distinguished. Day from night and where it stands all things turn gray. It's yellow. I rebukes the Sun and pricked by its beak all colors run through its one leg into the bottom of the Bay. All day disdain the Dismal fishes swim about that one deceiving read and flout the warning line that runs from its sun moves Shadow to the point of death. Why does the hair and wait alone controlled and celibate Simon's to light? He's on his Rod waiting for the weakening of God, but executioner who prays a day before he slays and what at last the sun slanty beneath his clouding breast is turned all things to Gold delayed the answer comes. The Heron strikes and kills his wish for he eats only golden fish and that same fish mirrored in the herons avadi sees himself as golden and dies in that belief both fish and bird at end by that same son (00:43:55) deceived. (00:43:59) I don't want to keep you too long. I would do to political polls before I do this Last Wish don't really relate to Minnesota. But since you're our minnesotans may have wondered about some of my politics. They may be helpful one was actually I started to write it because of joggers. It was about 1965. There were Reverend Malcolm boy had written a book called. Are you running with me Jesus? And joggers were coming on strong. There was a article in Parade Magazine that he said that Billy Graham jogged even when he was in England. And there was a story about Senator proxmire running to the Senate and back and George Romney was a candidate. He was a heavy jogger early in the morning. He would run slowly and I said things sort of came together and I wrote poems that are you running with me. Jesus asked the Reverend Malcolm Boyd. May I ask the same? I'm not matching stride with Billy Graham by the Clyde. I'm not going for distance with proximity and persistence. I'm not trying to win a race even at George Romney space. I'm an existential Runner indifferent to space. I'm running here in place wall-to-wall on ending the treadmill carpet flows baseboard to baseboard unchanging from the Looms of Mohawk as I run against the clock. Are you running with me Jesus or not? You left the question unanswered and the other one. It's called communion. Involves, well, three or four facts to start with and the symbolism sort of comes out of the dude was a politician who owned a large Ranch in a large Southwestern State. And there was a newspaper story. He said to some press people who on the ranch, so don't frighten the deer were wild. He said we'd like to have them around and we get ready to shoot them. There was another story about and if you shot when he would have the head-mounted for you and then insist you put it up on the wall. And Senator Humphrey these Memoirs makes reference he would take you out and shooting car and send her out for he said he took him out and said shoot the deer and he shot one and he went on he said shoot another one and he did that in any case he had the (00:46:28) head-mounted and then (00:46:31) Humphrey said he didn't like to do it. He didn't want to shoot deer with this was Johnson, of course, then he'd have the meat ground into sausage and he'd send you the sausage which you could give to your friends and the poem says it's called Community says gentle the deer with solicitude and Solace them with salt. Cover them with apples prepare them for the rectitude of the man who will come a stranger with an unfamiliar gun. The Watcher calls and Trust the head turns between the antlers Saint Hubert's cross Burns no conversion today, but quick shot the buck drops to his knees indecent genuflection to death. The dough flees he is not dead. He will arise and three weeks the head will look from a wall. But with changed eyes, what are the body of lightness and swiftness or witness ground heart and muscle intestinal cased tied with gristle a sausage sacrament of communion, so that all may be one under the transplanted eyes of the Watcher. And this is somewhat more gentle poem actually. I say it was sort of inspired by experiencing a small plane over Redwood Falls. It's called Ground fog and night. It really was we had a meeting in Redwood Falls was in 1964 and October. You got a lot of ground fog in the pilot said look we got to get out of here by 9:00 o'clock. And so we said everyone now short speeches. We had Wayne Morse with us. And more stock for an hour so we didn't get to the airport until 10:00. And the deposit but we don't have any radio here Marshall Minnesota when we get up in the air we can get Redwood (00:48:21) Falls (00:48:23) and they'll tell us whether there's any place we can land but we should have said look maybe we ought to stay on the ground. Anyway, we took off and we picked up Redwood Falls and they began giving us the ceilings from there to Minneapolis and the far they went the lower the ceilings were and then they begin to drop behind us until the pasta. We better turn around and get back to Marshall as fast as we can and we got back in time. But in any case this was a part of what's in this poem called Ground fog and (00:48:51) night. (00:48:54) A cloud is subtly woven over the field day and night together be get the Cataract film. It holds while the Earth with its burden of brush and of trees of houses and Steeples sinks slowly. Nowadays songs die and night bird songs are dampened by the fog crescendos of cicadas cross the Prairies of the night and then are gone in silence like the Bison ruminant stomachs yielder cuds and tree frogs fall into green sleep. Spiders lying upside down like Michelangelo on his back make a ceiling between themselves and God plants rid themselves of death spawned in them by the Sun and burrowing beasts live on as before shrews and moles sheltered their Dark World The Horde stolen from the light. Now all in Vermin do contests to no winners from the day men an air-conditioned room set clocks against the night and wait for Dawn no sign of God has left above the fog only the red-eyed Tower stands to tell of Life below and I give one poem which is really just sort of (00:50:04) like, I don't know (00:50:07) theme Palm. I guess it doesn't have too much of Minnesota. It's it's called the aardvark and I think the symbolism is very good. It takes a little explanation the aardvark people think they know things about the art of art, but they don't they almost do so. It's like bad heresy is close to the truth, but it's very serious not to really know the aardvark properly and undertaken in this poem to do it on reading of an aardvark born in captivity, which is bad enough to be an aardvark just loose and the other thing about it, is that an aardvark so far. They know the kind of it hasn't evolved from anything and it isn't evolving into anything. It's an absolute animal right? There. It is and nothing before or after accepting other aardvarks (00:51:00) and (00:51:02) It's difficult to used as a metaphor because you can say the aardvark is like every other animal and it's reasonably true, but you can't say an animal any animal is like the aardvark because if you're like an aardvark you are one, so it's not a reversible metaphor and it's the same. it's like God you could say God is like the director of the museum But you can't say that. The director is like God unless he is God. He might be you have to be very careful about because you really get caught if you'd be turn this thing around and so this is all in this poem says I'm alone in the land of the aardvarks. All the aardvarks are going east. I walking West Aardvarks, can I look and listen at the same time? And they are listening now for the sound of marching feet of the termites that they are going to eat. The termites are behind me. They are Choice termites. They have grown fat on the dead wood of the tree of knowledge. Even if the aardvarks were looking they could not see me for I am wearing red and green. Their world is empty of red and green purple and orange and Roman Brown. Their eyes are wide in the dark or narrow in the light. They see only gray both night and day. The red Earth Parts before them. It does not close behind with their long tongues. They speaketh in language. I do not understand aardvarks think always have soft food because they have no gizzards. That's it. Thank you very (00:52:51) much.