1
"Beautiful memory, most precious
and most treacherous sister.
"What temples must we build for you?
"And even then,
how belatedly you open to us.
"Even then, with what exuberance
you cross us."
Hi. Thanks for coming.
I'm gonna read from...
a series of poems.
They're written in long lines to...
give a feeling of... how we
actually speak to each other.
"I slip up on her, hook her narrow neck,
"haul her to me,
"hold her for a moment, let her go.
"Maybe the right words
were there all along.
"Complicity. Wonder.
"How pure we were then.
"Before Rimbaud, before Blake.
"Grace, love.
"Take care of us.
"Take care of us.
"Please."
Move your hand.
Let 'em do their thing.
They're thinking...
- That's the thinking vein?
- Yes.
- Move your hand.
- No, don't touch it.
Let me see. Move your hand.
If I think about veins,
I'm gonna pass out.
- Okay, let me see.
- Oh, my God.
- You got me thinking about 'em.
- Let me see!
Well, how about you...
- stop thinking?
- Yeah, and?
And pay attention to me.
Like literary things. Like I walk down
the street and I have a purpose.
I am... I have a mission.
You walk down the street and you go,
"Oh, look at that. Shiny things and..."
Shiny things? What? I don't...
Yeah, or just a light will hit a wall
and you'll stare at it for a while.
You get distracted easily.
Or inspired, however you want to say it.
Feel like I maybe
just got you a little mad.
- No, just...
- Are you sure?
No, no, whatever.
- Where's the pots?
- I'll get them out in a second.
Hey. Hey! Come here.
I'm totally kidding, I promise.
Hey. I'm so sorry.
I am. I'm so, so, so sorry.
Alright, so you put your hands like this.
Don't ask me why. Are you getting old?
I know, it's your hips. Alright, here we go.
Ready? And you go like this.
Ai! Not so hard.
If I do it, I'm gonna do it hard.
No. Why can't you ever listen to me?
- I do listen to you.
- No, you don't! You never listen to me.
What do you mean?
What? Sit around, don't do anything...
It's fun.
Yeah, but, you know,
I have things I want to do.
- What, and I don't?
- I don't know. Do you?
I don't think that we always have to be
on the go. I just don't share that. I don't.
I think it's okay to sometimes just stop
and breathe for two seconds.
I don't see anything wrong with it.
I'll be back.
Good evening.
My name is C.K. Williams.
And...
these are poems that I wrote...
in my 20s...
loosely based on experiences I've had.
This one's called 'My Mother's Lips'.
"Until I asked her
to please stop doing it
"and was astonished to find..."
"Until I asked her
to please stop doing it..."
"Until I..."
'My Mother's Lips'.
"It's endearing to watch us again
in that long-ago dusk,
"facing each other, my mother and me.
"I've grown to her height,
or just past it."
- Okay.
- "Now the unison suddenly breaks.
"I have to go on by myself.
"No maestro, no score to follow.
"There are our lips moving together..."
'My Mother's Lips'.
You want pancakes?
No.
- Eggs?
- No.
Remember what happened last night?
I don't want to talk about it.
Okay.
Eat.
Daddy! Daddy!
What is it, Charlie?
I need you to go to sleep.
Please!
For the love of God, go to sleep.
I don't want you to wake up
until tomorrow morning.
Listen to me. Hey.
I want you to go to sleep, alright?
Okay? I'm getting tired
of this, Charlie.
Hey, Charlie! Come on.
How many times did I tell you
to keep up with me, son?
I want you to stay with me, alright?
You want me to hold your hand?
Do I need to hold you?
Can you walk? Very good.
I'm gonna count to 10. 10!
If you aren't out here
by the time I hit 10,
boy, you're gonna get a whooping so hard,
you won't know what the hell hit you.
One, two,
three, four,
five, six...
seven, eight,
nine, ten.
"Although it's quiet now, not a sound,
"it's hard not to cry out.
"The boy doesn't know why.
"He doesn't know why,
but it's hard not to cry out.
"It's so hard not to cry out."
No!
Daddy!
Baby.
Ooh, line it up.
- Aw.
- Rats.
You did it. That counts.
- Are you ready?
- Yeah.
- I did it!
- You did too.
- And these rocks...
- Yep?
...do you throw it at any animals?
- No.
- What do you do with the rocks?
- I hit them at the dumpster.
- At the dumpster?
- You don't shoot it at any kids?
- No.
You know what you should shoot at?
You should shoot at your bad dreams.
Mom? Mom?
- I didn't know there was a pool here.
- Neither did I.
It's great. It's great.
- Did you unpack yet?
- Yeah.
- No.
- No. No, I didn't.
Dad'll be here tomorrow.
I think he'll like it here.
- You're getting in?
- Yeah.
I think I'm gonna practise my dive.
I mean, I've been practising a lot,
and...
now I think I can get it,
get it right.
I know I can get it right this time.
- I can get it really...
- Perfectly straight.
"My mother, all through my childhood,
"when I was saying something to her,
something important,
"would move her lips as I was speaking
"so that she seemed to be saying
under her breath
"the very words I was saying
as I was saying them.
"All she was really doing, of course,
was mouthing my words
"a split second
after I said them myself.
"But it wasn't until my own children were
learning to talk that I really understood how
"and understood too
the edge of anxiety in it,
"the wanting to bring you along
out of the silence,
"the compulsion to lift you again
"from those blank caverns
of namelessness we encase."
- Mom? I think my watch stopped.
- Your watch stopped.
Can you please stop repeating
what I'm saying?
Okay. Alright, honey. Okay.
"I breathe it still, that breeze.
"I breathe it still, that breeze.
"And not knowing how I know
for certain that it's that.
"Although I know it is.
"I don't know then that the place,
a mile from anywhere,
"and day, brilliant, sultry, balmy,
"is intensifying everything I feel."
Whoa. Stop. No. Don't do that.
Don't.
Stop it.
"Hm. I must be 12.
"She a little older, 13, 14."
- Where are you going?
- Where are you going?
I don't know.
It's so cold.
- Don't look.
- What?
Look away.
You don't want to see this.
Now that I've seen it,
it's gonna hurt worse.
Squeeze.
"I don't know then that the place,
"a mile from anywhere,
"and day, brilliant, sultry, balmy,
"is intensifying everything I feel."
"I breathe it still, that breeze.
"I breathe it still, that breeze.
"And not knowing
how I know for certain that it's that.
"Although it is, I know, exactly that."
Sarah?
Sarah?!
Here.
"I breathe it still, that breeze.
"Stay still. Stay still. Here.
"Stay still.
"Stay still here."
Irene!
Can you drive?
I have a couple of times with my dad.
I don't know.
You can.
Play with your hair.
Make 'em kiss you.
I love you.
"Stay. Still. Here.
"Stay."
"I knew something, surely.
I'd have had to.
"What I really knew, of course,
I'll never know again
"Beautiful memory, most precious
and most treacherous sister
"What temples must we build for you?
"And even then,
how belatedly you open to us
"Even then, with what exuberance
you cross us."
"It was cold,
"but not enough to catch
or clear your breath.
"Uncertain clouds, unemphatic light.
"All that held now was that violated,
looted country,
"the fraying fringes of the town,
"those gutted hills, hills by rote,
"hills by permission,
"great, naked wastes of wrack and spill,
"vivid and disconsolate,
"like genitalia shaved
and disinfected for an operation."
They're Japanese.
You get 40 miles to a gallon.
- No way.
- Yeah way.
- BS. They're lying.
- They're not lying.
- They are lying.
- I'm thinking of buying one.
You're a traitor, then.
Are you from Detroit or not?
You get eight miles
a gallon in your Galaxy.
That's right. That's how it starts.
- What do you mean how it starts?
- That's how the un-American thing starts.
You're unbelievable.
So, what, are you gonna buy a Gremlin?
- A Gremlin's not a bad little car.
- It's a piece of junk.
They're wide. You can put a submarine
sandwich all the way across sideways in it.
Do you live in Detroit, yes or no?
- Yeah, I do.
- Buy an American car.
- God's sake.
- You're unbelievable.
Have you been to Lafayette lately,
Coney Island?
- What about it?
- It sucks.
Why does it suck? I was there last week.
It's cheaper. It's more expensive
and it's worse meat.
How can it be worse meat?
It's already bad meat.
I'm telling you, it's not the same.
I had a horrible heartburn
when I was there.
- And you don't normally?
- No.
From their chilli cheese dog
with fries on the side?
- Been at Woodward lately?
- No.
- South of Davidson?
- No!
- It's all screwed up.
- Really?
They tore it up,
torn up into a million pieces.
- Man. I got to go to Allen Park now.
- You ain't gonna get to Allen Park.
You're gonna have to go
all the way around.
- The gas is $1.20 a gallon.
- You got a customer.
- What can I do for you, sir?
- Just this and a cup of coffee.
- Okay. Cream, sugar?
- No.
That'll be 65 cents.
You guys are the only place
open around here.
I'll be here until the end,
until God tells me to pull the switch.
- I grew up around here.
- Where?
- Birmingham.
- Birmingham. Hoity-toity.
- Hoity-toity.
- Nice.
- Where do you live now?
- Paris. France.
- What the hell do you do there?
- France?
- I'm a writer.
- They speak French there.
- What do you write, French?
- Nah, just poetry.
Poetry. I'm a poet.
But I didn't know it.
But my feet show it.
They sure are long fellows.
- Alright.
- Not bad.
Mom!
You alright? Come on.
Come on in, fellas.
Will you shut that door behind you?
Okay.
So, here we are, men.
This is my humble abode.
My stomping ground, home, you know?
I'll tell you what, I'm really happy
that you guys decided to come along.
- We're excited.
- Yeah.
Do me a favour, man.
Usually we have no smoking in here.
- Can you put that out for me?
- Sorry about that.
Okay.
You fellas make yourself at home. I'll be
right back in just one moment, alright?
- Alright.
- Okay.
Baby, you up?
You been sleeping since I left?
Would you like me
to make you some dinner?
How many?
Two.
Put cheese in my eggs.
Listen, baby, I brought you some water.
It's right there. I'll be right back.
You ready? Hey. Come here. You ready?
$2.
Sit down.
- You ready?
- Yeah.
You don't look like you're ready.
Would you like something to eat?
Oh, no, thank you.
I'm not really hungry.
You're up.
Get off me. Get off me.
Fuck this, man.
"A gas station, Route 22.
"I remember exactly... Route 22 curved.
"There was a squat, striped concrete divider
they'd put in after a plague of collisions.
"The gas station...
Texaco, Esso, I don't know."
Charlie.
Come on, man. We gotta go.
Charlie, come on.
You're a fucking animal, Dan.
Go home.
Fucking...
"Maybe the right words
were there all along.
"Complicity. Wonder.
"How pure we were then.
"Before Rimbaud, before Blake.
"Grace, love.
"Take care of us.
"Please."
Unlock it!
Lift it.
Why did you lock it?
There. Come here, silly!
Well, I want to go for a last time.
No, it's just gonna be
one more time, okay? Gimme a kiss.
- Can I count 'em one more time?
- Gimme a kiss first.
- Love you.
- Love you.
- Can I count to 20 this time?
- No, you cannot count to 20 this time.
"The last party before I left,
I was at loose ends,
"and although
I didn't like admitting it,
"chronically adrift and lonely."
Stop it! Stop right now.
I'll call the police.
"Every misfit in the city,
every freeloader,
"every blown-out druggie
and glazed teenybopper,
"plus the crazies
and no telling who or what else,
"stunned on rotgut wine
or grass or acid.
"They danced mechanically.
"There was something almost
maniacally mindless about it.
"But at the same time, it was like a battle,
that intense, that lunatic.
"And as I hesitate in the doorway,
something made me realise just how much,
"without noticing,
I'd come to be of that,
"to want or need it.
"And I swear I must have swayed."
"It was snowing.
"The city in that holy silence.
"He was making patterns
that I thought at first were circles
"then realised made a figure-8.
"In the morning, nothing.
"Every trace of him effaced,
all the field pure white."
"Maybe one year when the cold came
and I closed my windows,
"I forgot them.
"Everything was complicated now.
So much tension.
"So much bothersome self-consciousness.
"Also, I'd found a girl
to be in love with.
"All we wanted was to live together.
"So we did."
- Hey.
- Hey.
- Come in.
- Thanks.
Mother has baked some streusel cake.
It has cherries in it.
Great.
"So fierce it was,
so strenuous, aggressive.
"My thigh here, my hand here,
lips here, here.
"Hers here and here.
"But never there or there.
"All this while,
nothing would be happening.
"Nothing, that is,
in the way I'd mean it now.
"This is what she wanted somehow.
Only this. Yes. Only this."
Is that a compliment?
I think so.
Baby? You think so?
Did you say you think so?
- There are plenty of people...
- What?
...that would die for that nose.
I come in here to cheer you up...
But there are also plenty
of cartoon characters that...
- ...have that nose.
- No. Stop. Stop.
Stop while you're ahead in that one.
- Your best smile.
- Yeah?
That's cool.
But the people
that were voting were blind?
"'On Learning of a Friend's Illness',
for James Wright.
"The morning is so grey
that the grass is grey.
"And the side of the white horse grazing
"is as grey and hard
as the harsh, insistent wind
"gnawing the iron surface of the river."
- Hey.
- Hey.
- I thought you forgot about me.
- Sorry, man, I lost track of time.
Look at you.
What's with the farmer's outfit?
Hey.
- How was the trip?
- Easy. Quick.
- What?
- No. I'm just glad to see you.
Me too. Come on. It's just up the road.
Alright.
How long are you gonna be here for?
I don't know.
Taking my time and...
It's a great deal.
I just take care of the horses and...
- Didn't know you liked animals.
- I do, I do. I've never ridden a horse.
But I have a dog I love very much.
Just keep your hand flat.
- Yeah. Fingers out.
- Don't take my fingers.
Alright. If he gets... If he goes...
Keep your hands flat.
- Feels funny.
- Don't give it to him till...
- Don't let him do the tooth thing.
- They're already all gone.
This is Webster.
Other one's Wylie. He's the oldest.
Something's wrong
with his back hoof. He's...
kinda hobbling about.
I keep him in the smaller pen
so he can't walk around so much.
You okay?
Come on, this way.
So here it is.
They said they can level it with stones.
They just need three layers,
then they can start
putting in the pillars.
One'll go... out here,
one there and there and there.
How long is that gonna take?
They said about six months.
Oh.
What?
No, it's great.
I think I ate something weird.
Let's... let's go back
and get some water.
No, no, come on.
Wylie?
Wylie!
You're gonna be okay.
"It is a long while since the issues
of mortality have taken me this way.
"Shivering, I tramped the thin, bitten track
to the first rise, the first descent,
"no comfort here, nothing to say,
to try to say, nothing for anyone."
Jed.
Time to wake up.
Jed?
I see.
Someone ordered the tickle.
Alright.
Don't want to wake up, get the tickle.
Yeah?
Like to get tickled. Alright.
Coming right up.
Coming right up!
Yeah? Like to get tickled? Alright.
- Good morning.
- Good morning.
With regard to it,
it wasn't an accident.
This is the failure
of a piece of machinery.
There's also a bubble in the reactor vessel
that means that any change
in the hydraulics in the core
have to be closely monitored...
"All morning, a crew of workmen
"have been tearing the old,
decrepit roof off our building.
"And all morning, trying to distract myself,
I've been wandering out to watch them
"as they hack away at the leaden layers
of asbestos paper."
All safety equipment
functioned properly...
"It's the first morning
at Three Mile Island,
"those first disquieting, uncertain,
mystifying hours.
"We still know less than nothing."
...this point, we believe there is still
no danger to the public's health.
Metropolitan Edison
has been monitoring the air and...
Hey.
We didn't wake you up?
This guy, he was sleeping too?
What my dad used to do.
He used to steal my nose.
Alright, I'll put it back.
Do you want to help me
give Daddy a haircut?
- Yeah.
- How'd you like that?
Do you think we should shave
all of Daddy's hair off?
No?
"Surely we suspect now
we're being lied to."
...is still occurring inside the primary...
"I remember the President
in his absurd protective booties
"looking absolutely unafraid...
"the fool."
"But in the meantime,
there are the roofers.
"I never realised
what brutal work it is,
"how matter-of-factly
and harrowingly dangerous.
"And there I am at my window, gawking."
...radiation from the facility
approximately 20 minutes ago...
...opt to stay indoors
as a precautionary measure,
you know, until they hear further...
A lot of people are leaving
the Harrisburg area...
"However much we didn't want to,
however little we would do about it,
"we'd understood...
"we were going to perish, all of us,
"if not now, then soon,
"if not soon, then some day."
"Be here now," she said.
Just be here.
Just be here.
"I think I know,
though I might rather not,
"why my roofers stay so clear to me
"and why the rest dims some."
...to leave the area
within a five-mile radius
of the Three Mile Island facility
until further notice.
Let me stress once again
that the historic record of nuclear power
has been an excellent one.
This is the first significant
nuclear accident
that we have experienced...
You okay?
- Sorry.
- No, it's okay.
It's okay.
I don't know.
Look, I'm... I'm sorry...
it's taken so long.
I love you.
I'll see you soon.
"No comfort here.
Nothing to say, to try to say.
"Nothing for anyone.
"Her silence,
"how to begin to speak of it?
"I think sometimes
I must have simply gaped.
"There were harmonies in it,
progressions, colours, resolutions.
"It was a symphony, a tone poem.
"I seemed to live in it.
"It was always with me,
"a matrix, background sound,
"surf, wind.
"Also, I'd found a girl
to be in love with.
"All we wanted was to live together.
"So we did."
Thank you.