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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody this is Morton Marcus and this is the First Poetry Show for the year 2000 in the new millennium. And I thought what I do tonight is read some of my favorite poems to you, poems that you may have heard me

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read in the past 12 years since I've been doing the show, maybe have forgotten them, and of course maybe have not heard them because you've not been listening to the show for that time, or just may have missed them. I will steer you on to

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these poets because, to me really, what this show is all about and what poetry is all about are finding the words and the inspiration to move from one day to the next, in a sense of wonder and joy, as you confront your daily life, both privately

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and publicly. So let me start off with a poem which actually is called ‘‘At Year‘s End“, which begins in December 1931, by the poet of perfect utterance, and this is a poet I read as a young man and I was rather astonished by, because he

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was a master of technique, perfect control of imagery, and tone of voice, and marvelous sentences elegance, and his name is Richard Wilbur. And you can find his Collected Works virtually anywhere, and you will just see by what I'm talking

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about here, the wonderful rhymes here, how he works, these beautiful, beautiful lines and this is AT YEAR‘S END Now winter downs the dying of the year, and night is all a

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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. I've known the wind by water banks to shake the late

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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 in gestures of descent, they seemed their own most perfect monument. There was perfection in the death of ferns

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which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone a million years. Great mammoths overthrown composedly have made their long sojourns, like palaces of patience, in the gray and changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii the little dog lay

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curled and did not rise but slept the deeper as the ashes rose and found the people incomplete, and 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

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time must give us pause. We fray into the 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.

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And Richard Wilbur is very, very famous and has won many, many awards over his career which really began after World War II. Another contemporary of his, or a contemporary of his by the name of John Holmes is not very well known, and yet was

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certainly a- an influence on me, what he did with language, but also his vision, which was, I think, so alive and so concerned. And here are two of my favorite poems by John Holmes, a very little known poet who taught at Tufts University

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for years and whose work was really only anthologized in one anthology that I know of. This is John Holmes's “Map of My Country“ and after a poem about new years, or “Years End“ if you will, I think that a map of a America is a fit subject for

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this- this program and the second poem on this program. John Holmes‘s MAP OF MY COUNTRY A map of my native country is all edges, the shore touching

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sea, the easy impartial rivers splitting the local boundary lines, round hills in two townships, blue ponds interrupting the careful county shapes. The Mississippi runs down the middle. Cape Cod. The Gulf. Nebraska is on latitude

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40. Kansas is West of Missouri. When I was a child, I drew it, from memory, a game in the classroom, naming the big cities right. Cloud shadows were not shown, nor where winter whitens, nor the wide road the day's wind takes. None of the tall letters

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told my grandfather's name. Nothing said ‘‘here they see in clear air a hundred miles. Here they go to bed early. They fear snow here." Oak trees and maple boughs I had seen on the big hillsides changing color, and laurel, and bayberry, were never

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mapped. Geography told only capitols and state lines. I have come a long way using other men's maps for the turnings. I have a long way to go. It is time I drew the map again, spread with the broad colors of life, and words of my own

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saying, “Here the people worked hard and died for the wrong reasons, here wild strawberries tell the time of year. I could not sleep, here where bell-buoys beyond the surf rang. Here trains passed in the night, crying the distance, calling to

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cities far away, listening for an answer." On my own map of my own country, I shall show where there were never wars, and plot the changed way I hear men speak in the West, words in the South slower, the food different. Not the court houses seen

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floodlighted at night from trains, but the local stone built into house walls, and barns telling the traveler where he is by the slant of the roof, the color of the paint. Not monuments. Not the battlefields famous in school, but Thoreau's

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pond, and Huckleberry Finn's island. I shall name an unhistorical hill three boys climbed one morning. Lines indicate my few journeys, and the long way letters come from absent friends. Forest is where green fern cooled me under the

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big trees. Ocean is where I ran in the white drag of waves on white sand. Music is what I heard in a country house while hearts broke not knowing they were breaking, and Brahms wrote it. All that I remember happened to me here. This is the known

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world. I shall make a star here for a man who died too young. Here, and here, in gold, I shall mark two towns famous for nothing, except that I have been happy in them. That it was John Holmes, H-o-l-m-e-s. Very unknown poet

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who wrote around five books and was only anthologized once. Here is another poem by John Holmes. Alas, recounting an event that has been all too prevalent in the 20th century and certainly, we ended the 20th century with almost one half of the world

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involved in this situation. And it is called EVENING MEAL IN THE 20TH CENTURY How is it I can eat bread here, and cut meat, and in quiet shake salt, speak of the meal, pour water, serve my son's small

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plate? Here now I love well my wife's gold hair combed, her voice, her violin, our books on shelves in another room, the tall chest shining darkly in supper-light. I have read tonight the sudden meaningless foreign violent death of a

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nation we both loved, hope for our country not ours killed. But blacker than print: For the million people no house now. For me a new hurt to the old health of the heart once more: That sore, that heavy, that dull, and I think now incurable pain:

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Seeing love hated, seeing real death, knowing evil alive I was taught was conquered. How shall I cut this breath- bread gladly unless more share the day's meals I earn, or offer my wife meat from our fire, our fortune? It should not have taken me so

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long to learn. But how can I speak aloud at my own table tonight and not curse my own food, not cry out death, and not frighten my young son? And so we start off with two American poets on this evening

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in which I will read a random group of my own favorite poems. Poems that have kept me alive and moving forward for the last 60 odd years. And we will be going to poems from all over the world very shortly. Here's one I read just around a month or two

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ago and that received quite a lot of comments from listeners out there and people I would meet, and it's by the great Greek poet, who- and I will just name books by these people. Where did this book go? George Seferis whose Collected Poems

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have been out, and are still in print from Princeton University in a paperback translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, they're marvelous translations. And I would urge you to read this man who is really a great poet. And this is

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his poem “The King of Asini“, which I read and which was received with quite an amount of- as I said, quite an amount of enthusiasm by people who called me up and who told me they really wanted to know where to get it. I would say there are

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many, many other poems in his book that are really fascinating. He was inspired by the wonderful poet, T.S Eliot, who you all know, and who was really his hero. Many, many interesting poems, especially about World War II, but what he

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would do is he would weave poems from Greek myth and Greek history as so many- as all Greek poets do, because the history is so alive to them and the literature. And in “The King of Asini“ he is in this bay, where there is the ruined walls of a

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citadel, and he thinks he has found that he and these others amateur archaeologists have been looking for the place that was ruled by Ασíνην τε or the king of Asini. And the king of Asini is mentioned once in the Iliad, and they are looking for some

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evidence of his existence, besides just the mention of his ships in the Iliad. There is also reference in this poem to the gold burial mask and that gold burial mask is the flat gold mask, it looks like a flat plate of this face, which is

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bearded, and he's wondering if that is the king of Asini. It was called Agamemnon, Agamemnon's burial mask and actually was on Earth only around 20 miles away from this area where he is in the bay at Naphthalene. And just listen to

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it, it's it's gorgeous and it's a wonder of trying to touch the past, of trying to move into history, and become a part not only of history but of your own time. THE KING OF ASINI (and aga n that's Ασíνην

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All morning long we looked around the citadel starting from the shaded side there where the sea green and without lustre — breast of a slain peacock — received us like time without an opening in it. Veins of rock dropped down from high above,

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twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive at the water’s touch, while the eye following them struggled to escape the monotonous see-saw motion, growing weaker and weaker.

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On the sunny side a long empty beach and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls. No living thing, the wild doves gone and the king of Asini, whom we’ve been trying to find for two years now, unknown, forgotten by all, even by Homer,

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only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain, Asini Te, thrown here like the gold burial mask. You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light, like a dry jar and dug warth: the same sound that our oars make in the sea now. The king of Asini a

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void under the mask everywhere with us, everywhere with us, under a name: “Ασíνην τε...Ασíνην τε...“ and his children statues and his desires the fluttering birds, and the wind and the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships anchored

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in a vanished port: under the mask a void. Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence a dark spot that you see travelling like a fish in the dawn calm of the sea: a void

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everywhere with us. And the bird, that flew away last winter with a broken wing, a boat of life, and the young woman who left to play with a dog-teeth of summer and the soul that sought the lower world squeaking in the country like a large plane-leaf

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swept along by the torrent of the sun with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow. And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself, does there really exist among these ruins, lines, edges,

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points, hollows and curves does there really exist here where one meets the path of rain, wind and ruin does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness of those who’ve shrunken so strangely in our lives, those who remain the

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shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea’s boundlessness or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight, the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence there, where we now remain unsubstantial, bending like the branches of a terrible willow

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tree heaped in permanent despair, while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness has turned to marble: the poet a void.

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Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring, and from the depths of the cave a startled bat hit the light as an arrow hits a shield: “Ασíνην τε...Ασíνην τε..“. If only that could be the king of Asini we've been searching for so carefully on this acropolis

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sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon the stones. Let me read one more poem by Seferis and this is called "Engomi." And Engomi is a village in the Northwest of

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Famagusta, Cypres, where a dig is taking place in this poem; they are digging for the past. And this poem is one of those great evocations, there are several in Seferis‘s work, of the moment of vision when time seems to collapse, and you have

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entered into a world of timelessness, and ancestors and their live offspring once more become one. It's the moment of vision and it's beautifully done in this poem. These translations, by the way, are really marvelous by Keeley and

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Sherrard, and again I'm reading right now from the Collected Poems of George Seferis, a book that is available and is from Princeton University Press, that's S-e-f-e-r-i-s. ENGOMI

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Broad the plane and level. From a distance you could see arms circling as they dug. In the sky the clouds all curves, here and there a trumpet golden and rose, the sunset. In the meager grass and the thorns stirred light after after showered air; it had

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rained there on the peaks of the mountains that now took on color. And I moved on towards those at work, women and men digging with picks in trenches. It was an ancient city, walls, streets, and houses stood out like the petrified muscles of

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Cyclops. The anatomy of spent strength under the eye of the archaeologist, anesthetist, or surgeon. Phantoms and fabrics, luxury and lips, buried in the curtains of pain spread wide open to reveal naked and indifferent, the tomb. And I

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looked up towards those at work, the stretched sore shoulders and the arms that struck this dead silence with a rhythm heavy and swift, as though the wheel of fate were passing through the ruins. Suddenly, I was walking and did not walk. I looked at

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the flying birds and they had stopped stone-dead. I looked at the sky's air and it was full of wonder. I looked at the bodies laboring and there was still and among them a face climbing the light, the black hair spilled over the collar, the eyebrows

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had the motion of a swallow's wings, the nostrils arched above the lips, and the body emerged from the struggling arms stripped with the unripe breasts of the virgin, a motionless dance. And I lowered my eyes to look all around, girls kneaded

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but they didn't touch the dough, women spun but the spindles didn't turn, lambs were being watered, but their tongues hung still above green waters that seemed to sleep and the plowman stood fixed with his staff poised. And I looked again at

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that body ascending over the scene: people had gathered like ants, and they struck her with lances, but didn't wound her- wound her. Her belly now shone like the moon, and I thought the sky was the womb that bore her and now took her back, mother

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and child. Her feet stayed marble still and vanished, an assumption. The world then became again as it had been, ours: the world of time and earth. Aromas of terebinth began to stir on the old slopes of memory, breasts among leaves,

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lips moist, and all went dry at once on the length of the plane. In the sown stones despair and eroded power in that empty place with the meager grass and the thorns where a snake slithered heedless, where they take a long time to die.

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That was George Seferis, a marvelous Greek poet. And since we're reading Greek poetry I might as well read some other Greek poems. And I hope I have brought along the book where I read one of my favorite Ritsos poems. I'm going to read now one

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of the most amazing poets of the 20th century and if you've not heard of him, run out and get this book, but I'm going to tell you about another book that people do not know about. There is a book called- well now, I don't know, but it's all three

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of these books, parentheses, revisions, parentheses, and something else, but anyway, it'll be under the name of Yannis Ritsos, R-i-t-s-o-s. Again, translated by Edmund Keeley and put out by Princeton University Press, and that will

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give you a lot of Ritsos poems. However, there is a Selected Poems of Yannis Ritsos, over 400 pages, a terrific selection, edited by Kimon Friar, the great Greek translator of Ritsos's work and he brings together the best translations that have been

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done in English over the past 30 or 40 years of this major poet. Anything I read you by Yannis Ritsos will only be like one 10th of what his work is about. He has got at least 300 pages of long monologue poems of widows ruminating lonely in- in

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moonlight, Agamemnon, Elektra- thinking about their worlds, as well, as I said, contemporary people thinking about their worlds. Wonderful, long lyric meditations. His shorter work deals with a lot of the political problems of Greece of

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which he was caught up in, and in prison time after time. But let me just give you a sense of the magic this man could work in some of these shorter poems, which are incredible, almost surrealistic pictures, which becomes sort of dream myths of

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our existence. Here's a poem called ‘‘Miniature‘‘. And it has to do with a love unspoken between a young lieutenant who is about to go to the front and this older woman, who are in this very formal situation and will not address their feelings.

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MINIATURE The woman stood up in front of the table. Her sad hands begin to cut thin slices of lemon for tea like yellow wheels for a very small carriage made for a child's fairy tale. The young

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officer sitting opposite is buried in the old armchair. He doesn't look at her. He lights up his cigarette. His hand holding the match trembles, throwing light on his tender chin and the teacup's handle. The clock holds its heartbeat

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for a moment. Something has been postponed. The moment has gone. It's too late now. Let's drink our tea. Is it possible, then, for death to come in that kind of carriage? To pass by and go away? And only this carriage to remain, with its little yellow

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wheels of lemon parked for so many years on a side street with unlit lamps, and then a small song, a little mist, and then nothing? So taking an image of what the woman‘s cutting of the lemon

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makes us look at, these little circles of lemon as wheels of a very small carriage, suddenly that very small carriage and that image just blossoms. Here's another poem it‘s called WOMEN

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Women are very distant, their sheets smell of goodnight. They set the bread down on the table, so we won't feel they're absent. Then we recognize that it was our fault. We get up out of our chair and say, ‘‘you worked awfully hard today,‘‘ or

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‘‘forget it, I‘ll light the lamp.‘‘ When we strike the match, she turns slowly and moves off with unexplicable concentration toward the kitchen. Her back is a bitterly sand hill loaded with many dead, the family's dead or her dead,

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your own death. You hear her footsteps creek on the old floorboards, hear the dishes cry in the rack, and then you hear the train that's taking the soldiers to the front. And here's more Yannis Ritsos. I just want to find the right ones

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here. Here's called the ‘‘Alibi.‘‘ THE ALIBI She looked at herself in the dark window of the side street and, as she was lit on one side by the light which moved and on

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the other by her bitter smile, the deep wrinkles showed next to her eyes. "I'm getting old," she said to herself, and she felt a sweet numbness in her limbs. She then opened her purse, to give alms to the beggar. But there was no beggar anywhere in the

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street. She noticed her gesture reflected in the shop window, perhaps a reversal, an innocent gentle self-deception, perhaps even deception, and she smiled again at her spectre in the window. Then she took out her comb and calmly combed her hair.

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Surely as an alibi. Even if there were no longer a way, nearer, or further away, at least there were, deep in the shop window, her lit wrinkles, like a small, upright ladder. She could climb out on that ladder. But what if, behind the

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pane, right behind her image, the shop assistant was looking at her, invisible? And this is called ‘‘Memory‘‘ Ritsos literally wrote thousands of poems. Everything just turned into poetry at his touch.

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MEMORY A warm smell had remained in the armpits of her overcoat. The overcoat on the hanger and the corridor was like a drawn curtain. Whatever happened now was in another time. The light

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changed faces, all unknown. And if someone made to enter the house, that empty overcoat would raise its arms slowly, bitterly, to shut the door again silently. Okay.

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I just wanted to read one or two more here. Yup, this is called: ALMOST A CONJURER From a distance he lowers the light of the oil lamp, he moves the chairs without touching them. He gets tired. He takes

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off his hat and fans himself. Then with a drawn out gesture, he produces three playing cards from the side of his ear. Exhausted, he leans on the so- sofa and shuts his eyes. ‘‘I have a bird in my head,‘‘ he says, ‘‘I can't get it out.‘‘

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The shadow of two huge wings fill the room. That was Yannis Ritsos and what we are doing tonight is trying to- not trying to, but I'm actually giving poems that have meant a lot to me, and certainly works by poets who have meant a

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lot to me. Yannis Ritsos‘s poems can be gotten in the Keeley translations from Princeton University Press, but Boa, that's B-o-a, Boa Press has put out this gigantic, still available Selected Poems by Yannis Ritsos, which I would

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suggest to anyone. They are a feast of poetry, they should be on everyone's bookshelf, and it contains all the different kinds of poetry that Ritsos wrote, including these long poems I've been talking about. Right now we're going to take a break and

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we will be back with some public announcements and more poetry from around the world. Okay, This is Morton Marcus again and we're going to continue my reading of some of my favorite poems. I don't know

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how many of them I'll get through. But I do want to make some announcements of events. First of all, coming up on January the 11th, that's Tuesday, January the 11th, at 8pm, at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, certainly one of the most

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exciting young poets, I wonder if she'd call herself still young, but she is to me, that's Kim Addonizio, who I've appeared with and read with, and who is just really an exciting, marvelous young poet, and she will be reading at the Bookshop

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Santa Cruz at 8pm on January 11. And I'm sure you'll hear more from either Kim or Dennis next week on that, but put that on your list, that's the first big reading in Santa Cruz in the year 2000. And I want to remind you to sign up if you're looking

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to write poetry with a really fine poet and poetry teacher and that's Joe Stroud at Cabrillo College. That will be happening serve- probably the third week in January, but do sign up right now at Cabrillo College because I'm sure that the class is going

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to fill up very, very quickly, that's Joe Stroud‘s poetry workshop at Cabrillo. Well, as you also know, at nine o'clock after we go off, there is "From The Bookshelf" and that is live readings of short stories on Sunday nights here on KUSP at

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9pm. Tonight "From the Bookshelf," which is hosted by the inimitable Billy Harris, we will have Tom Pistola reading excerpts from Linda Berry's book, "The Good Times Are Killing Me." So we will announce that again before we go. Well, I

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would like to travel now, since it's amazing how fast this time goes, to China and read some Chinese poems that I love and they're in versions that I have translated. So, here we go. And again, a good poem for the New Year's, this is called:

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LISTENING TO MONK JUN PLAY THE LUTE In Sichuan I met a monk descen ing mount Emei, carrying a lute n a green silk case. When he pla ed for me fingers brushi g the strings, I heard 10,000 pine trees murmur in the mounta

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n valleys. With a song flowin spring, he washed my soul clea . And even though the echo s of his music blend with a toll ng of frosty bells, I no long r notice the green hills turn ng gray, or the autumn clo ds that pile up, darkening th

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ravines And that is the great magical half legendary Chinese poet Li Po, whose name in the new transliteration is Li Bai. Here's another one, a four lin end stop by Li Ba

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At autumn cove, white monkeys, hundreds of them hopping and somersaulting like snowflakes in the wind. They coax and tug they're young from the branches to drink and frolic with the moon that arrived to the water.

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And one of my favorites, which I worked on for months trying to get the- the sense of the Chinese into English by Bai Juyi, another Tang dynasty poet which- two poems in fact, this one's called:

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MADLY SINGING IN THE MOUNTAINS, by image of the poet Everyone has a weakness, mine is writing poetry. I've driven out all desires, but this one still remains. Each time I see a landscape, each time I meet a friend, I trump it out a verse

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as if a god had touched me, exiled in Shenyang. As if a god had touched me, exiled in Shenyang I spend my days in the hills. When I finish a new poem, I climb the road to East Rock, lean on the shelves of white stone and pull down acacia

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branch, loose my mad singing. It stuns the hills and valleys, apes and birds peek out at me, I don't want to be laughed at, but what can I do? At least I chose a place that's away from the world of men.

00:37:38.610 - 00:37:51.090

Bai Juyi is famous for his long didactic poems, which are actually beautifully wrought. But I've chosen these very, very jolly poems, but it's also because they're shorter. Here's another one and this is:

00:37:51.090 - 00:38:09.640

ON HIS BALDNESS At dawn I'd grown to see my hai fall out; at dusk I'd grown t see my hair fall out, I dreade when the last strand would go Well now they're all gone and don't mind at all. I'm throug

00:38:09.640 - 00:38:27.760

with awkward washing and drying My dingy comb is laid side forever. Best of all, when the weather is humid and hot, have no top knot weighing own my skull. I lay my dusty cap aside and open my collar. I ve stored a snow cold stream in

00:38:27.760 - 00:38:48.130

a silver jar and I pour a lad e full over my bald pate. As i baptized by the water of Budd a, I sit humbly beneath this hilly cleansing. Now I kn w why the priest who seeks tr nquility first frees his hea t by shaving his head.

00:38:49.000 - 00:39:13.240

And let's jump to the Sung dynasty and the great Su Dongpo. And you can hear me turning the pages, a man of many moods, an this- he is my favorite Chines poet. And he was a judge, he wa a governor, very, ver important; he rose very high an

00:39:13.240 - 00:39:37.030

fell very low as a Chines government official, an minister. And here he is as judge and again, a very fittin poem, year‘s end, this is seei g the year out Chinese time in 1062. So we're in the Sung d nasty now. He lived to 1101. Fro

00:39:37.030 - 00:39:58.820

1037 to 1101. I got the wrong NEW YEAR'S EVE It's New Year's Eve. I should be home. But official business keeps me here. Weeping. I raise the brush and face them, pitiful

00:39:58.820 - 00:40:24.470

convicts in chains, little men who tried to fill their bellies but fell into the law's net. They don't understand the word disgrace. And I, clutching to a meager salary, I've kept my job instead of retiring. Does that make me wiser than they? All of

00:40:24.470 - 00:40:50.410

us scheme to earn our bread. It's New Year's Eve, the ancients would have freed them for a while. Do I dare? I am silent and ashamed. Here's another one by Su Dongpo. Also known as Su Shi.

00:40:52.190 - 00:41:06.740

DRINKING ON EAST SLOPE Drinking on East slope tonight I am tipsy, yet sober. It's third watch by the time I reach home. The houseboy snores like thunder, nobody answers my rapping on the gate. Leaning on

00:41:06.740 - 00:41:28.790

my staff I listen to the river. Always I regret my body is not my own. When will I learn to forget this world? Night about to end, the wind still, the river a wrinkled bolt of white silk, soon a little boat will drift away, its remaining years

00:41:29.030 - 00:41:53.240

spend on rivers and seas. And I see that I do not have some of my others- Yes, there it is. A spirit to leave Su Dongpo with is “A Walk in the Country." And of course this is spring, and let us say that we've gone

00:41:53.240 - 00:42:09.850

from the depths of new year and the convicts to early spring, and here is: A WALK IN THE COUNTRY, 1063, by Su Dongpo An easterly breeze stirs fine dust in the road. First chance

00:42:09.850 - 00:42:28.030

for strolling this spring. A time of leisure, good for drinking at roadside inns, the grass still too short to be crushed by wagon wheels. City people tired of being enclosed by walls clatter out at dawn, leaving the city empty. Songs

00:42:28.030 - 00:42:49.480

and drums startle the hills, flowers and trees shake, picnic baskets litter the field and are poked and snapped at by crows. Who's that over there, gathering a crowd? Says he's a monk. Scowling as he sells his charms to passers by. "Silkworms? These

00:42:49.480 - 00:43:07.750

will give you cocoons large as water jugs. Livestock? These will make your sheep as big as deer." Nobody really believes him. It's the spirit of spring they're buying in his charms. He grabs the money, and when he has enough, he hurries off to an inn

00:43:07.750 - 00:43:26.790

for wine, finally falling down drunk and muttering “these charms, they really work.“ That was Su Dongpo. The selected work of Su Dongpo - not in those translations, those are my workings - but marvelously done

00:43:26.820 - 00:43:48.990

by the great Burton Watson, can be gotten from Copper Canyon Press, as can a lot of the books of Chinese poetry. There, it certainly a work of love by the publisher up there, but republished by Copper Canyon Press, "Selected Poems of Su

00:43:48.990 - 00:44:08.610

Dongpo," T-u-n-g is the way they pronounce it- the old translation. Let me read you now, and going into the Arabic world, some poetry by the great Rumi, and many of you know Co- Coleman

00:44:08.640 - 00:44:33.150

Bark‘s excellent translation. These are going to be my versions. And I just am looking for some- when- ones to read you from the Divan-I, but I'll just give you just some lines from some of these:

00:44:34.500 - 00:44:50.950

Come, let us rejoice, for today is a festival, joy and pleasure will be ours from now on. That's the way he begins one, and one of my favorite thing- favorite poems Divan-I, number 23 from [unidentified] and this

00:44:50.950 - 00:45:06.120

is my version of it: Begin to whirl your perfume scattering hair, whirl into dancing the souls of the Sufi. Sun, moon, and stars dance around us in a circle and we, dancing in the center, make the

00:45:06.120 - 00:45:23.610

center dance. Like a singing dancer, your smallest movement is a music that brings the Sufi of heaven into the dancing wheel. The spring breeze scurries forward humming it's music. It makes the earth laugh and raises autumn from the dead.

00:45:24.210 - 00:45:39.420

Snakes are friendly, the rose and thorn embrace, the fruitful season brims in the orchard. Every moment a perfume streams from a garden like a message as if to say, "Welcome, welcome good friends."

00:45:41.430 - 00:46:05.220

And on and on, wonderful poetry. Here's another one that I love, many of the Divan-I are actually love poems to Shamsi Tabriz, his great spiritual love, the man who really opened the vision of the world to Rumi. And here is my version of yet- the 146th

00:46:05.700 - 00:46:22.400

poem from the Divan-I which has 2500 poems in it. If the tree could move on foot or wing, it would avoid the scrape of the saw and the cut of the axe. And if the sun did not travel every night on food or wing, how would the world be

00:46:22.400 - 00:46:40.520

lighted in the morning? If the salt water did not rise from the sea to the sky, how could the garden be revived by cloudburst and drizzle? Returning to the ocean from which it had departed, the water drop fell into a shell and became a pearl.

00:46:41.960 - 00:47:01.490

Wasn't Joseph weeping, dragged on a journey from his father, but didn't he find happiness, a kingdom and victory because of it? Wasn't Muhammad forced to flee to Medina, where he gained sovereignity and became king of a hundred lands? And you, if you

00:47:01.490 - 00:47:23.150

have no feet, choose to journey into yourself like a ruby mine, remain open to the dazzle of sunbeams. Journey out of yourself into yourself, oh master, for such a journey makes the planet a goldmine. Leave sourness and bitterness and

00:47:23.150 - 00:47:41.750

travel towards sweetness, just as a thousand different fruits rise from an acid soil. Observe these miracles worked by the sun, that pride of Tabriz, for every plant gains splendor from the sun's light.

00:47:45.920 - 00:48:09.380

And that is the great Rumi. His other book- there was another great poem but I don't have time to read it really. The Masnavi is also been translated in part, it's actually been totally translated, and I would suggest that you get it, but alas, that

00:48:09.380 - 00:48:27.320

translation is- it's in like four or five volumes. And I know it is on sale at the Sufi Bookshop if it is still there at the Art Center in downtown Santa Cruz, go in there and browse and ask the wonderful owner for some suggestions as to the poetry of

00:48:27.320 - 00:48:59.750

Rumi by Barks and other things that he has. I certainly think you will love it. Let me read some poems by Pablo Neruda, the marvelous Pablo Neruda, and here I go to another book. As I'm finding more and more things, well here, okay, just to hold

00:48:59.750 - 00:49:29.030

that in my hand. This always happens to me at the end because I want to read so many things, and I shall. But first, here is ‘‘Lazy Bones,‘‘ this is a later poem by Neruda. And it sort of addresses- Of the many, many poems by the great Pablo Neruda,

00:49:29.030 - 00:49:46.250

which are marvelously translated, get the Alastair Reid translations or the Merwin translations; these are really far and away the best. But certainly, this is the later Neruda, very many different styles again, much like Yiannis

00:49:46.280 - 00:49:56.370

Ritsos, tremendous growth of poetry, tremendous amount of poetry. Here's the great Neruda in LAZY BONES and it's sort of very much part of the world that is changing,

00:49:56.370 - 00:50:13.680

the high tech world, as we move into 2001 They will continue wandering, these things of steel among the stars, and weary men will still go up to brutalise the placid moon. There they will found their pharmacies.

00:50:14.850 - 00:50:31.920

In this time of the swollen grape the wine begins to come to life between the sea and the mountain ranges. In Chile now, cherries are dancing, the dark mysterious girls are singing, and in guitars, water is shining.

00:50:33.130 - 00:50:46.780

The sun is touching every door and making a wonder of the wheat. The first wine is pink in color, is sweet with the sweetness of a child. The second wine is able-bodied, strong like the

00:50:46.780 - 00:51:03.610

voice of a sailor. The third wine is a topaz, is a poppy and fire in one. My house has both the sea and the earth. My woman has great eyes, the color of wild hazelnut. When night comes down,

00:51:03.730 - 00:51:22.810

the sea puts on a dress of white and green, and later the moon in the spindrift foam dreams like a sea-green girl. I have no wish to change my planet. And I wish I would have time to read so much more by Neruda, a

00:51:22.810 - 00:51:41.770

tremendous influence and a tremendous poet. Let me read some poems by César Vallejo. That last- that last poem is not translated by me; it was translated by Alastair Reid. Here's Robert Bly and one of the best translations I've read of

00:51:41.770 - 00:51:57.670

César Vallejo, the Chilean poet. These are translations. It's a poem called: THE ANGER THAT BREAKS A MAN DOWN INTO BOYS Really, sort of, I think, a seminal poem for his mood,

00:51:58.390 - 00:52:22.010

Vallejo's mood, and social and political sensibility. The anger that breaks a man down into boys, that breaks the boy down into equal birds, and the bird, then, into tiny eggs; the anger of the poor owns one smooth oil against two vinegars.

00:52:23.480 - 00:52:37.760

The anger that breaks the tree down into leaves, and the leaf down into different-sized buds, and the buds into infinitely fine grooves; the anger of the poor owns two rivers against a number of seas.

00:52:38.990 - 00:52:55.640

The anger that breaks the good down into doubts, and doubts down into three matching arcs, and the arc, then, into unimaginable tombs; the anger of the poor owns one piece of steel against two daggers.

00:52:57.830 - 00:53:15.110

The anger that breaks the soul down into bodies, the body down into different organs, and the organ down into reverberating octaves of thoughts; the anger of the poor owns one deep fire against two craters.

00:53:21.930 - 00:53:43.530

And I'd like to continue this reading. I'm not going to get to, I see, an awful lot of poetry that I want to get to. But I do want to get to at least two other poems, and this is one of them. This is the great Philip Levine, the American

00:53:43.530 - 00:54:01.980

poet. And as we leave the 20th century and the tragedies of the 20th century, this is a marvelous, marvelous poem called “To Cipriano, In The Wind” that I'm sure you've heard me read it on this program several times before. It's Phil remembering

00:54:01.980 - 00:54:25.650

when he worked in a cleaner's and the presser was a man by the name of Cipriano who was Spanish and who obviously had immigrated to America after the Spanish Civil War. And Phil remembers him as a young man. And this is- this is a marvelous poem, which

00:54:25.650 - 00:54:43.860

continues the ideas of Vallejo about the poor, about the third world, about the dispossessed within our own midst, and how far the world has to go. And he- it's called “To Cipriano, In The Wind” and I mean, the language here and the rhythms, obviously

00:54:43.860 - 00:54:55.920

Phil is not only swept up by them, but he is in total control of them to communicate them to the reader. And this is the great Philip Levine: TO CIPRIANO, IN THE WIND

00:54:59.020 - 00:55:15.940

Where did your words go, Cipriano, spoken to me 38 years ago in the back of Peerless Cleaners, where raised on a little wooden platform you bow to the hissing press and under the glaring bulb the scars across your shoulders - ‘‘a gift

00:55:15.970 - 00:55:35.800

of my country‘‘ you said, gleamed like old wood. “Dignidad,“ you said into my boy‘s wide eyes, ‘‘without is no riches.‘‘ And Ferrente, the dapper Sicilian coatmaker, laughed. What could a pants presser know of dignity? That

00:55:35.800 - 00:55:53.560

was in the winter of 41, it would take my brother off to war, where you would come from, it would bring great snowfalls, graying in the streets, and the news of death racing through the halls of my school. I was growing. Soon, I would be your

00:55:53.560 - 00:56:11.440

height and you tell me eye to eye, ‘‘Some day the world is ours, some day you will see.‘‘ And your eyes burned in your fine white face until I thought you would burn. That was the winter of 41. Bataan would fall to the Japanese and Sam- Sam

00:56:11.440 - 00:56:27.400

Baghosian would make the long march with bayonet wounds and both legs, and somehow in spite of burning acids splashed across his chest and the acids of his own anger rising toward his heart, he would return to us and eat the stale bread of victory.

00:56:29.290 - 00:56:46.090

Cipriano, do you remember what followed the worst snow? It rained all night. And in the dawn the streets gleamed, and within a week wild phlox leaped in the open fields. I told you our word for it, ‘‘spring‘‘ and you said ‘‘spring, spring, it

00:56:46.090 - 00:57:08.410

always comes after.‘‘ Soon the Germans rolled East into Russia, and my cousins died. I walked alone in the warm spring winds of evening and said ‘‘Dignity.‘‘ I said your words, Cipriano, into the winds, I said, ‘‘some day this will all be ours.‘‘

00:57:09.730 - 00:57:27.310

Come back, Cipriano Mera, step out of the wind and dressed in the robe of your pain tell me again that this world will be ours. Enter my dreams or my life, Cipriano, come back out of the wind.

00:57:29.970 - 00:58:01.650

And I want to end this evening with a great poem by a Turkish poet by the name- I'm struggling to get it here. Maybe I'm not going to get it here. I did not bring it. That is amazing, that is amazing. In fact, it is more amazing- Oh there is- a Turkish

00:58:01.650 - 00:58:20.940

poet by the name of Nâzım Hikmet, who wrote a poem called ‘‘On Living‘‘ and it is what I leave with you tonight as we move into the 21st century, and I hope you think about some of the serious questions and problems and joys of our life.

00:58:20.940 - 00:58:35.880

Here is Nazim Hikmet, another man who spent almost half his life in Turkish jails, for a kinder vision like this, ON LIVING, in three parts I. Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great

00:58:35.910 - 00:58:52.500

seriousness, well like a squirrel, for example - I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to

00:58:52.500 - 00:59:08.580

such a degree that, for example, your hands tied behind your back, your back to the wall, or else in a laboratory in your white coat and thick glasses, you'll be able to die for people - even for people whose faces you've never seen, even though

00:59:08.580 - 00:59:22.980

you know living is the most real, the most beautiful thing. I mean, you must take living so seriously, that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olives - and not so there'll be left for your children either, but because even though you fear

00:59:22.980 - 00:59:38.680

death, you don't believe it because living, I mean, weighs heavier. II. Let's say we're seriously ill, needs surgery - which is to say there's a chance we won't get up from the white table.

00:59:39.610 - 00:59:54.310

Even though it's impossible not to feel sad about going a little too soon. we'll still laugh at the jokes being told, we'll look out the window to see if it's raining, or we'll still wait anxiously for the latest newscast... Let's say we're at

00:59:54.310 - 01:00:11.770

the front - for something worth fighting for say. There are in the first offensive, on that very day, we might fall on our face, dead. We'll know this with a curious anger, but we'll still worry ourselves to death about the outcome of the war, which

01:00:11.770 - 01:00:30.490

might go on for years. Let's say we're in prison, and close to fifty, and we have 18 more years to serve, say, before the ir n doors will open. We'll sti l live with the outside, with i s people and animals, struggle a d wind - I mean, with the outsi

01:00:30.490 - 01:00:49.080

e beyond the walls. I mea , however, and wherever we are, e must live as if one never die III. This earth will grow cold, a star among stars and one of the smallest, a gilded mote on the blue velvet - I mean- I

01:00:49.080 - 01:01:12.780

mean this, our greater earth. This earth will grow cold one day, not like a heap of ice or a dead cloud even like an empty walnut it will roll along in pitch black space... You must grieve for this now - you have to feel this sorrow now - for

01:01:12.780 - 01:01:30.210

the world must be loved this much if you're going to say "I lived". . . Thank you, this is Morrt Marcus, I'll see you in three weeks. Stay tuned for "On The Bookshelf" with Billy Harris.