00:00:37.230 - 00:00:50.370

Morton Marcus: Well, this is The Poetry Show, and this is, as I said, the Christmas show, and tonight, I would like to read poems that have to do with the birth of Christ. Certainly one of the great events in the spiritual life of man on this

00:00:50.370 - 00:01:10.650

planet. And I would also like to read secular poems because Christmas has become a very secular holiday really. It is a time in America when families get together, when they renew the relationship of parents and children, uncles, nephews,

00:01:10.650 - 00:01:35.760

nieces. And we once more wait the one week for the new year when we once more look to a future which will hopefully be better than the last. And I want to get the tone of this program off by reading you a poem by a Hungarian poet by the name of

00:01:37.650 - 00:01:51.720

Miroslav Holub and I think you'll see that it is not going to be the kind of gushy sentimental Christmas program that you may have expected, then again may not have expected. This poem is called:

00:01:52.080 - 00:02:13.510

HOW TO PAINT A PERFECT CHRISTMAS Above you paint the sky, delicate as the hair of a girl, below pour a little darkne s heated to room temperature, r slightly more. Where the cat ' claw in the dark, scratch out

00:02:13.510 - 00:02:37.300

a little tree, the finest tree n the world, finer than ny forester could ever imagine. nd the tree itself will light up and the whole picture purr ith green joy, with purple ope. Right. But now you mus put under the tree the real

00:02:37.330 - 00:02:59.350

big thing. The thing you most ant in the world. The thing pop singers call happiness. t's easy enough for a cat, a c t will put a mouse there. Colone Blimp will line up the larges jet-propelled fighter bomber which shoots and bangs an

00:02:59.350 - 00:03:23.110

salutes that he can find. sparrow will gather a few stalk for its nest. Mr. Junior Cler will submit a stuffed file tie with red tape. A butterfly wil put there a new rubber peac ck’s eye. But what would you ut under that Christmas tree?

00:03:23.110 - 00:03:48.520

ou think and think till the ay grows gray, till the river al ost runs out, till even the bu bs begin to yawn. You think an finally, there in the darkness you blot out a hazy white spot bit like a penny, a bit like a hip, a bit like the moon, a bit

00:03:48.520 - 00:04:15.550

like the beautiful face of someone, who? Other than your ow . A hazy white spot, perhaps mo e like emptiness, like t e negation of something, like on-pain, like non-fear, like on-worry, a hazy white spot and you go to bed and say to

00:04:15.550 - 00:04:43.080

yourself, yes, now I know how to do it. Yes, now I know. Yes, next year I shall paint the ost perfect Christmas that ever as. That was a poem ‘’Painting the Perfect Christmas‘’ by Miroslav

00:04:43.080 - 00:05:12.780

Holub. And I would like to get into the religious aspect of the program tonight by reading several sections from the work of our own William Everson, the great poet, who has lived in our midst for the last 15 years or so and who of course, was once

00:05:12.780 - 00:05:33.570

Brother Antoninus and is fiercely dedicated to the Catholic religion and its vision. And in his book, ‘’The Veritable Years‘’ which are his Collected Poems for 1949 to 1966, he writes or begins the book adequately enough with "A

00:05:33.600 - 00:05:51.890

Triptych For the Living." And it's in three parts, obviously, and the second is about the birth of Christ. And this is his description with his epigraph: To the coming. And she brought forth her firstborn son and

00:05:51.890 - 00:06:17.570

wrapped him up in swaddling bands, and laid him in a manger. Blood on the black bowl trodden Earth, where the cow had bled out the womb blind calf, where the shuttering yew had bled, and the beasts‘ fortuity, the beasts grown. It too, it also, birth,

00:06:18.140 - 00:06:39.230

like death, ravenous, and unspeakable rank fertility of Earth splitting it's pod. But this time a difference, that lull in the air, that laps as if the great device of the flesh, the need of the flesh made flesh, the flesh founded forever

00:06:39.230 - 00:06:58.550

upon the flesh, blood on the blood, as if on the instant the stroke were checked, and the flame sprang through purely between the forces of the pain, [unidentified] with a flush of godhead, set round with a tongues of angels burning and

00:06:58.550 - 00:07:20.930

flashing in the strewn litter on the somber floor. Nor would that night contain it. There was an age insurgent, scrawled on the stonework of the temple wall. There was the massive aftermath flanked with the doom of kings, and the secret seed spored in

00:07:20.930 - 00:07:42.050

the bowels of Empire. That was the powerful regrouping of the mind where the sordid puppets snored on their [unidentified] thrones. That and the bear power, which is love, forged now in the frighted human soul, as the force of a love larger than

00:07:42.050 - 00:08:13.130

it swells the weazened heart to the stature of a faith. Birth, like death transcended. The blood burnt out of the stable floor. Outside the oxen and the ass crunch their corn. But the man, the man seized in that vortex breaks on his knees and

00:08:13.130 - 00:12:05.060

prays. That was "Hark for the Herald Angels" of course. And it punctuated the first poem that we will read by Billy Everson, which is about the birth of Christ. Let us go back and look

00:12:05.060 - 00:12:24.860

at another poet, a Catholic poet, who was profoundly affected obviously in the last poem, Everson sees the wonder and the magic, the separation from the gross flesh, into the sense of the spirit, which was brought to the world in the

00:12:24.860 - 00:12:53.540

birth of Christ. Here is Robert Lowell, the great American poet. In the 40s, while World War II is going on, observing the life that went on in Boston, and thinking about how these 2000 years have really not brought us any change in the human spirit,

00:12:53.570 - 00:13:13.490

human behavior, but that the hope is always there as long as there is the sense of Christ, symbol of Christ as- as God. THE HOLY INNOCENTS (a meditative poem, I think) Listen, the hay-bells tinkle as the cart wavers on rubber tires

00:13:13.550 - 00:13:37.790

along the tar and cindered ice below the burlap mill and ale-wife run. The oxen drool and start in wonder at the fenders of a car, and blunder hugely up St. Peter's Hill. These are the undefiled by women. Their sorrow is not the sorrow of this world.

00:13:38.570 - 00:13:59.510

King Herod shrieking vengeance at the curled up knees of Jesus, choking in the air, a king of speechless clods and infants. Still, the world out Herods Herod; and the year the nineteen—hundred forty—fifth of grace, lumbers with losses up to

00:13:59.510 - 00:14:21.710

clinkard hill of our purgation; and the oxen near the worn foundations of their resting place, the holy manger where their bed is corn and holly torn for Christmas. If they die, as Jesus, in the harness, who will mourn? Lamb of the shepherds,

00:14:21.950 - 00:14:42.490

Child, how still you lie. I should tell you that, tell you once more this is The Poetry Show and this is the Christmas Poetry Show, though not maybe poems that you are used to hearing. I also would like to

00:14:42.490 - 00:14:57.640

tell you and will tell you several times during this program, though there are no events to report as happening over Christmas that have to do with poetry, there were none in my box anyway. I do want to prepare you for a very very

00:14:57.640 - 00:15:19.270

special evening which is coming the second weekend. January. And that is the reading by Robert Bly, the world famous American poet, on Saturday, January 10, 1987 at Cabrillo College, and that will start at 8pm and I would get my tickets quickly if

00:15:19.270 - 00:15:37.930

I could. You can pick them up at the Cabrillo College box office, the Sewsnon House, or at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, and I would definitely get those tickets as quickly as I can. I'm sure this event will sell out. One of the things Bly is going to do is he

00:15:37.930 - 00:15:53.050

is going to read his own poems, he's going to read the poems of Rilke, Machado, Rumi, and he is going to re-tell and interpret the story of The Frog Princess, the great Russian fairy tale. It is an evening that I do not think you will want to miss. If

00:15:53.050 - 00:16:07.480

you have seen Bly before, you know what awonderful, provocative performance he gives, and it really is performance. And if you've never seen Bly, you owe it to yourself, he is one of the most influential and important poets

00:16:07.510 - 00:16:26.260

in America. So keep that in mind January 10, 1987. And I am always struck by synchronicity, friends, and that means the confluence of dates or events that seem to happen in a pattern, though really are not in a pattern or are they? Today

00:16:26.260 - 00:16:44.590

happens to be Robert Bly‘s birthday. He was born on December 23 and on January 10, the night will be reading it Cabrillo is the 100th anniversary of Robinson Jeffers, probably the most famous poet of the Monterey Bay region, and

00:16:44.590 - 00:17:18.330

maybe the most famous West Coast poet. So I will be reading some of Robert Blys poems as well and as the evening goes on, and why don't I just read some of them now. And this is called- a young poem called ‘’Awakening,‘’ and it's-

00:17:19.980 - 00:17:32.610

can be well thought of as the awakening of Christ to the world. Here is the awakening generally by Robert Bly, who as I said will be reading at Cabrillo College Theatre on January 10.

00:17:33.990 - 00:17:51.130

AWAKENING We are approaching sleep: the chestnut blossoms in the mind mingle with thoughts of pain and the long roots of barley, bitterness, as if- as of the oak roots staining the waters dark

00:17:51.130 - 00:18:11.380

in Louisiana, the wet streets soaked with rain and sodden blossoms; out of this we have come, a tunnel softly hurdling into darkness. The storm is coming. The small farmhouse in Minnesota is hardly strong enough for the storm. Darkness,

00:18:11.410 - 00:18:30.370

darkness in grass, darkness in trees, even the water in wells trembles. Bodies give off darkness and chrysanthemums are dark, and horses, who are bearing great loads of hay to the deep barns where a dark air is moving from corners.

00:18:31.840 - 00:18:52.210

Lincoln‘s statue and the traffic. From the long past into the long present a bird forgotten in these pressures warbling as the great wheel turns around, grinding the living in water. Washing, continual washing, in water now

00:18:52.210 - 00:19:17.730

stained with blossoms and rotting logs, cries, half muffled from beneath the earth, the living awakened at last like the dead. Let us continue and get into some very famous poems, three

00:19:17.730 - 00:19:51.660

famous poems on the Wise Men, ‘’The Three Wise Men,‘’ and let us here- First of all, let's- let's do something interesting, let us read the- the the Christmas Carol and hear it of ‘’The Three Wise Men‘’ which goes as you know ‘’we three

00:19:51.660 - 00:20:21.210

kings of Orient are‘’ and then we will read some poems concerning the three kings if I can find them here. And it looks like I am not going to find them. Okay? Three Kings. Well, let's take a break first and then we will come back and we

00:20:21.210 - 00:22:43.150

will do it. And again, that is the SONG OF THE MAGI, which is: We three kings of Orient are; bearing gifts we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.

00:22:44.320 - 00:23:07.740

O star wonder, star of night, star of royal beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to the perfect light. And then Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar each take courses. And

00:23:07.770 - 00:23:28.230

of course, the story of ‘’The Three Kings‘’ is that they have come looking for the true God, they have followed the star in the heavens, and they finally confront the child Jesus in a manger. And I would like to read several poems that have pursued

00:23:28.230 - 00:23:51.930

this, by very, very famous contemporary poets. Here is the sense of the wise figures or the wisdom figures, as seen in the third of these triptych poems by Billy Everson. And he describes the lines by which they're described in the New Testament,

00:23:52.680 - 00:24:15.520

part three of his poem ‘’Triptych to the Living‘’ from ‘’The Veritable Years, ‘’Everson quotes ‘’behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is he?' ‘’ Miles across the turbulent kingdoms they came for it, bu

00:24:15.520 - 00:24:37.330

that was nothing, that was th least. Drunk with vision, rai stringing the ragged beards. W en a beast lamed, they caught up another and goaded west. For he time was on them. Once, a it may, in the life of a man, o ce, as it was, in the li

00:24:37.330 - 00:24:59.380

e of mankind, all is corrected And their years of pursuit, raw eyed reading the wrong text, cha ting the doubtful calculations, hose nights knotted with thought with dawn held off, and the r oster rattled the leaves with hi blind assertion - all tha

00:24:59.380 - 00:25:20.140

, they regarded under the S gn, no longer as searc but as preparation. For when he mark was made, they saw it. Nor stopped to reckon the falli le years, but rejoiced and fol owed, and are called wise, who l arned that Truth, when sought a

00:25:20.140 - 00:25:39.370

d at last seen, is never found. t is given. And they brought heir camels breakneck into that village and flung thems lves down in the dung and di t of that place, and kissed that ground, and the tears ran o the face where the ra

00:25:39.000 - 00:26:04.680

That was Bill Everson‘s interpretation and recreation of ‘’The Magi.‘’ Let's see some oth r people now, equally famo s poets, here is William Butl r Yeats talking about the Mag . And this is what he has to say

00:26:08.260 - 00:26:30.370

Now as at all times, I can see in the mind's eye, in their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky, with all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, and all their helms of silver

00:26:30.370 - 00:26:58.830

hovering side by side, and all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied, the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor. And what follows that with Yates is a sense not of the first

00:26:58.830 - 00:27:18.270

coming of Christ, but of the Second Coming in which in his very involved with philosophy that I won't try to go into, there comes a time of chaos when things fall apart, and out of that chaos will come the Second Coming and it may, he says, be

00:27:18.300 - 00:27:34.270

like this: THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats. Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

00:27:34.840 - 00:27:52.180

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

00:27:53.740 - 00:28:18.190

Surely, some revelation is at hand; surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert, a shape with lion body

00:28:18.190 - 00:28:42.010

and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving it's slow thighs, while all about it, reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to

00:28:42.010 - 00:29:16.490

nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? And no reading of poems about Magis or the Magi would be complete without one of T.S Eliot's most famous poems, ‘’The

00:29:16.490 - 00:29:42.950

Journey of the Magi,‘’ and though Eliot is supposedly difficult to understand, let me just say that this is a dramatic poem in many ways. And what we really have going on here is one of the old king‘s thinking years later about the journey to the

00:29:42.950 - 00:30:03.710

presence of the Christ Child's birth. And here is this old man thinking, T.S Eliot's JOURNEY OF THE MAGI A cold coming out of it, just the worst time of the year for a

00:30:03.710 - 00:30:27.680

journey, and such a long journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter. And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, lyin down in the melting snow. Ther were times who regretted th summer palaces on slopes, th

00:30:27.680 - 00:33:08.300

terraces, and the silken girl bringing sherbert. Then th camel men cursing and grumblin and running away, and wantin the liquor and women, and th night fires going out, and th And that was T.S Eliot‘s ‘’The Journey of the Magi‘’ was one of

00:30:42.140 - 00:31:02.870

lack of shelters, and the citie hostile and the town unfriendly, and the villages irty and charging high prices: hard time we had of it. At the nd we will prefer to travel at ight, sleeping in snatches, w th the voices singing in our e

00:31:02.870 - 00:31:30.440

rs, saying that this was all f lly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, wet, below the snow line, smelling a vegetation; with a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, and three trees on

00:31:30.550 - 00:31:58.030

the low sky, and an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine leaves over the lintel, six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, and feet kicking the empty wine-skins, but there was

00:31:58.150 - 00:32:27.180

no information, and so we continued and arrived that evening, not a moment too soon, finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, and I would do it again, but set down, this set down this: what

00:32:27.300 - 00:32:56.090

we lead all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth certainly, we had evidence and no doubt about it. I had seen birth and death, but I thought they were different; this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We

00:32:56.200 - 00:33:16.190

returned to our places, these Kingdoms, but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation with an alien people clutching the Magi, remembers years later the real significance of coming their gods. I shall be glad of another death.

00:33:14.960 - 00:35:54.490

upon the Christ child. Unknown: [Music: Noel] Morton Marcus: And with the singing of "Noel" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, we continue our Christmas program here on

00:35:54.490 - 00:36:11.980

KUSP. This is the new time slot for The Poetry Show, this is Morton Marcus, and I am reading contemporary poets on Christmas. I've just done a whole segment of the show on the religious aspect of Christmas and would now like to read some more

00:36:11.980 - 00:36:33.070

secular poems, if you will be so obliging. And I would also like to read another poem, which does relate though to the finding of Jesus by the Magi, though, in a very indirect way by the poet, whose birthday we celebrate tonight, I believe he must be

00:36:33.070 - 00:36:55.840

around 60 years old, actually. Maybe, yes, I think he is actually 60 years old today and that is Robert Bly, who will be at the Cabrillo College Theatre on January 10 of the coming year and I urge you to attend the reading, it will be a wonderful

00:36:55.840 - 00:37:19.890

event. Here is Bly talking about finding the father. My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing - as the ocean carries logs. So on some days the body wails with its great energy; it smashes up to boulders, lifting small crabs

00:37:19.890 - 00:37:39.840

that flow around the sides. Someone knocks on the door. We do not have time to dress. He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets to the dark house. We will go there the body says, and there find the father whom we have never

00:37:39.840 - 00:37:57.510

met, who wandered out in the snow storm the night we were born, and who then lost his memory, and has lived since longing for his child, whom he saw only once while he worked as a shoemaker, as a cattle herder in Australia, as a restaurant

00:37:57.510 - 00:38:26.550

cook who painted at night. When you light the lamp, you will see him. He sits there behind the door, the eyebrows so heavy, the forehead so light, lonely in his whole body, waiting for you. Well, I would like to read some poems on Christmas trees now.

00:38:27.540 - 00:38:50.580

And as you know, I'm sure most of you out there, the Christmas tree is a pagan, a Germanic pagan rite, as far as we know, and it celebrates the deity in trees and the wonder of the whole vegetative process in which trees are still alive in

00:38:51.210 - 00:39:07.560

the winter of the year. And it becomes christianized and I would like to, with your indulgence, read two poems on a Christmas tree, one by yours truly, and the other ‘’The Burning of the Christmas Greens‘’ by William Carlos

00:39:07.560 - 00:39:22.380

Williams. And this is a very personal poem called ‘’Christmas Tree‘’ and it was written some years ago as you can see, I am not as young as this poem says I am, or once was. CHRISTMAS TREE

00:39:25.090 - 00:39:48.310

Who would have thought that I'd feel sorry for the tree. As a child, I never had one, but remember in other's homes how each one stood, bejeweled and all ashimmer, like a patient woman waiting through the night. Now at 32, for my wife who's had

00:39:48.310 - 00:40:11.860

them and both our daughters I've bought this tree heady with pine tars and shaking bows and the odor of shadows on private hills and prompted in the living room, where its aroma has reminded me of how it's dying to decorate my winter home. I could have bought

00:40:11.860 - 00:40:31.540

aluminum, a metal tree, hung red baubles on its clicking bows, and never cared about fire or needles or the odors of the hill. But I wanted hills, the long odors, the possibility of imbecilic flames. I wanted something that's alive to share

00:40:31.540 - 00:40:55.360

this room. I guess I made my choice then. When young I thought you were a gypsy woman, gaudy with bracelets, ribbons, and perfume who waited in a Russian night for her lovers Troika to take her in. It comes down to this and choosing your

00:40:55.360 - 00:41:21.940

death. I somehow choose my life. I can't explain. I only know old men are sleeping in your wood, ingrained, undone. Old woman, you have waited long, expectantly, as we wait now seated before you, a little nervous that you give us only

00:41:21.940 - 00:41:46.810

what we give to you, tinsel, ribbons, the vaguest of perfumes. This poem then, is for your patience and the rings that widen into generations where your death is and where finally we all belong.

00:41:54.010 - 00:42:20.380

And then on the same theme, a poem by the vigorous and wonderful American poet William Carlos Williams called ‘’Burning the Christmas Greens.‘’ And this of course is talking about the time after Christmas when we get rid of the trees, we get rid of

00:42:20.380 - 00:42:44.650

the reeds, and this is what he sees in it. BURNING THE CHRISTMAS GREENS by William Carlos Williams. Their time passed, pulled down, cracked and flung to the fire - go up in a roar. All recognition lost, burnt clean, clean in the

00:42:44.650 - 00:43:06.520

flame, the green dispersed, a living red, flame red, red as blood wakes on the ash - and ebbs to a steady burning, the rekindled bed become a landscape of flame. At the winters midnight, we went to the trees, the coarse holly, the balsam and

00:43:06.520 - 00:43:24.940

the hemlock for their green. At the thick of the dark, the moment of the cold's deepest plunge we brought branches cut from the green trees to fill our need; and over doorways, about paper Christmas bells covered with tinfoil and fastened by red

00:43:24.940 - 00:43:47.590

ribbons, we stuck the green prongs in the windows, hung woven wreaths and about pictures the living green. On the mantel, we built a green forest and among those hemlock sprays put a herd of small white deer as if they were walking there. All

00:43:47.590 - 00:44:10.960

this! And it seems gentle and good to us. Their time passed, relief! The room bare now. We stuffed the dead grate with them upon the half-burnt-out log smoldering eye, opening red and closing under them, and we stood there looking down. Green is a

00:44:10.960 - 00:44:32.110

solace, a promise of peace, a fort against the cold (though he did not say so) a challenge above the snow‘s hard show. Green (we might have said) that, where small birds hide and dodge and lift their plaintive rallying cries, blocks for them

00:44:32.110 - 00:44:55.990

and knocks down the unseen bullets of the storm. Green spruce boughs pulled down by a weight of snow - transformed! Violence leaped and appeared. Recreant! Roared to life as the flame rose through and our eyes recoiled from it. In the jagged

00:44:55.990 - 00:45:19.450

flames green to red, instant and alive. Green! Those sure abutments - gone! Lost to mind and quick in the contracting tunnel of the grate appeared a world! Black mountains, black and red, as yet uncolored, and ash white, an infant landscape

00:45:19.450 - 00:48:21.620

of shimmering ash and flame and we, in that instant, lost, breathless to be witnesses, as if we stood ourselves refreshed among the shining fauna of that fire. That was the Vienna Boys Choir. And now I would like to read two

00:48:21.620 - 00:48:38.750

more poems by Robert Bly. He is, of course, a famous social critic, he organized many of the readings against the Vietnamese war. And I'd like to read two different kinds of poems by him one in which he looks at that thing that has gone very wrong

00:48:38.750 - 00:48:55.250

in our lives. Maybe it is the lack of the very spirituality that this holiday celebrates. And I think in one of his most powerful poems, ‘’Snow Banks North of the House‘’ we hear that. And then we will read a wonderful love poem that he's

00:48:55.250 - 00:49:16.010

written. Here is ‘’Snow Banks North of the House‘’ And I'm reading Robert Bly because today again is his 60th birthday, and he will be at the Cabrillo College Theatre on January 10, giving one of his famous performances and I do mean

00:49:16.010 - 00:49:30.950

performances. They're not just poetry readings, they are dramatic events. SNOW BANKS NORTH OF THE HOUSE, by Robert Bly. Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly, six feet from the

00:49:30.950 - 00:49:51.530

house. Thoughts that goes so far. The boy gets out of high school and reads no more books. The son stops calling home. The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no more bread. And the wife looks at her husband one night at a party and loves him

00:49:51.530 - 00:50:12.140

no more. The energy leaves the wine and the minister foil- falls leaving the church. It will not come closer. The one inside moves back and the hands touch nothing, and they're safe. And the father grieves for his son and will not leave the room

00:50:12.140 - 00:50:33.860

where the coffin stands. He turns away from his wife and she sleeps alone. And the sea lifts and falls all night. The moon goes on through the unattached heavens alone, and the toe of the shoe pivots in the dust. The man in the black coat turns and

00:50:33.860 - 00:50:57.260

goes back down the hill. No one knows why he came, or why he turned away, and did not climb the hill. Here's Bly in another mood and in another sense, in a poem, a lovely poem called:

00:50:57.260 - 00:51:18.650

A MAN AND A WOMAN SIT NEAR EACH OTHER A man and a woman sit near each other. And they do not long at this moment to be older or younger, nor born in any other nation or time or place. They are contend to be where they

00:51:18.650 - 00:51:44.750

are, talking or not talking. Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know. The man sees the way his fingers move. He sees her hands close around the books she hands to him. They obey a third body that they share in common. They have

00:51:44.750 - 00:52:09.290

made a promise to love that body. Age may come, parting may come. Death will come. A man and woman sit near each other. As they breathe they feel someone we do not know, someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

00:52:14.030 - 00:54:27.800

Robert Bly 60 Today we will be reading on January 10 at the Cabrillo College theatre. And so, we will conclude this hour's worth of the Poetry Show, the annual Christmas show with a new year's poem. I will not be

00:54:27.800 - 00:54:47.150

with you for the next possibly one or two shows. Joe we'll be back with you next time. And then I will be back in and around the 10th when I will be reading some more Robert Bly poems, but also possibly be doing a dual show. If Joe has

00:54:47.150 - 00:55:09.710

not left by then, he is going on a poetry reading tour of Oregon. And if he's not left by then we will do a joint program on the 100th anniversary of Robinson Jeffers. But to end this show, and right before Mr Blood comes in and takes over with "Things

00:55:09.740 - 00:55:30.080

Ain't What They Used to Be," taking over for Tim Folger, I would like to read one more poem, and that is a poem, as I said, about New Years and it's called really ‘’At Year's End‘’ and it is a poem by Richard Wilber which beautifully

00:55:30.320 - 00:55:54.140

expresses the sense of time and movement as well as a very contemporary sense of our existences. And maybe because there is a lot of landscape and nature description in the air, it's very, very in tune with Santa Cruz at this time of year,

00:55:55.310 - 00:56:16.780

and can well be seen as part of Santa Cruz life. Therefore, Richard Wilbur‘s AT YEAR‘S END Now winter downs the dying of the year and night is all a

00:56:16.780 - 00:56:35.950

settlement of snow. From the soft street the rooms of houses show a gathered light, a shapen atmosphere like frozen-over lakes, whose ice is thin, and still allows some stirring down within.

00:56:38.650 - 00:57:00.400

I've known the wind by water banks to shake the late leaves down, which frozen where they fell and held in ice as dancers in a spell fluttered all winter long into a lake. Graved on the dark and gestures of descent, they seem their own most perfect

00:57:00.460 - 00:57:19.630

monument. There was perfection in the death of ferns, which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone a million years. Great mammoths overthrown composedly have made their long sojourns like palaces

00:57:19.630 - 00:57:38.410

of patience in the gray and changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii the little dog lay curled and did not rise but slept the deeper as the ashes rose, and found the people incomplete and

00:57:38.410 - 00:57:59.140

froze the random hands, the loose unready eyes of men expecting yet another sun to do the shapely thing they had not done. These sudden ends of time must give us pause. We fray into the

00:57:59.140 - 01:01:11.610

future, rarely wrought save in the tapestries of afterthought. more time, more time. Barrages of applause come muffled from a buried radio. The New Year bells are wrangling with the snow. Larry Blood: KUSP Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas. It's time now

01:01:11.610 - 01:01:19.980

for "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," this time without Tim. Tim's on leave taking care of family business out of town,