Words in the Air

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

All My Pretty Ones

By Anne Sexton

Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart

where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;

a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,  

leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber  

you from the residence you could not afford:  

a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,

twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,  

the love and legal verbiage of another will,  

boxes of pictures of people I do not know.

I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,  

hold me. I stop here, where a small boy

waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...  

for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy  

or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.  

Is this your father’s father, this commodore

in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile  

has made it unimportant who you are looking for.  

I’ll never know what these faces are all about.  

I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began

the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly  

as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran  

the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me

and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went  

down and recent years where you went flush  

on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant  

to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.  

But before you had that second chance, I cried  

on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.  

Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;

here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races,  

here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,

here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,  

running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;  

here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;  

and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.  

Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,  

my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept  

for three years, telling all she does not say  

of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,

she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day  

with your blood, will I drink down your glass  

of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years  

goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.  

Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.  

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,

bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Waiting

by Raymond Carver

Left off the highway and

down the hill. At the

bottom, hang another left.

Keep bearing left. The road

will make a Y. Left again.

There’s a creek on the left.

Keep going. Just before

the road ends, there’ll be

another road. Take it

and no other. Otherwise,

your life will be ruined

forever. There’s a log house

with a shake roof, on the left.

It’s not that house. It’s

the next house, just over

a rise. The house

where trees are laden with

fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,

and marigold grow. It’s

the house where the woman

stands in the doorway

wearing the sun in her hair. The one

who’s been waiting

all this time.

The woman who loves you.

The one who can say,

“What’s kept you?”

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

This Morning

by Charles Simic 

Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.

I'm just sitting here mulling over

What to do this dark, overcast day?

It was a night of the radio turned down low,

Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.

I woke up lovesick and confused.

I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing

And some bird answering her,

But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying

And whispering. "Come to me my desire,"

I said. And she came to me by and by,

Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue

Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.

Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight

To bathe my hands and face in.

Hours passed, and then you crawled

Under the door, and stopped before me.

You visit the same tailors the mourners do,

Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,

The quiet--that holy state even the rain

Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,

As if with eyes closed,

Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Upon Nothing

BY JOHN WILMOT EARL OF ROCHESTER

Nothing! thou elder brother even to Shade:

That hadst a being ere the world was made,

And well fixed, art alone of ending not afraid.

Ere Time and Place were, Time and Place were not,

When primitive Nothing Something straight begot;

Then all proceeded from the great united What.

Something, the general attribute of all,

Severed from thee, its sole original,

Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall;

Yet Something did thy mighty power command,

And from fruitful Emptiness’s hand

Snatched men, beasts, birds, fire, air, and land.

Matter the wicked’st offspring of thy race,

By Form assisted, flew from thy embrace,

And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face.

With Form and Matter, Time and Place did join;

Body, thy foe, with these did leagues combine

To spoil thy peaceful realm, and ruin all thy line;

But turncoat Time assists the foe in vain,

And bribed by thee, destroys their short-lived reign,

And to thy hungry womb drives back thy slaves again.

Though mysteries are barred from laic eyes,

And the divine alone with warrant pries

Into thy bosom, where truth in private lies,

Yet this of thee the wise may truly say,

Thou from the virtuous nothing dost delay,

And to be part with thee the wicked wisely pray.

Great Negative, how vainly would the wise

Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,

Didst thou not stand to point their blind philosophies!

Is, or Is Not, the two great ends of Fate,

And True or False, the subject of debate,

That perfect or destroy the vast designs of state—

When they have racked the politician’s breast,

Within thy Bosom most securely rest,

And when reduced to thee, are least unsafe and best.

But Nothing, why does Something still permit

That sacred monarchs should at council sit

With persons highly thought at best for nothing fit,

While weighty Something modestly abstains

From princes’ coffers, and from statemen’s brains,

And Nothing there like stately Nothing reigns?

Nothing! who dwell’st with fools in grave disguise

For whom they reverend shapes and forms devise,

Lawn sleeves, and furs, and gowns, when they like thee look wise:

French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,

Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,

Spaniards’ dispatch, Danes’ wit are mainly seen in thee.

The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,

Kings’ promises, whores’ vows—towards thee may bend,

Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

De Profundis

by 

Georg Trakl

It is a stubble-field where black rain falls.

It is a dark-brown tree that stands alone.

It is a soughing wind that swirls round empty huts –

How dismal this evening.

Passing the hamlet

The gentle orphan girl still gathers scanty ears of corn.

Round and golden her eyes feast on the gathering dusk,

Her lap yearning for the heavenly bridegroom.

On their way home

The shepherds found the darling body

Rotting in the briers.

I am a shadow far from desolate villages.

God’s silence

I drank from the springs of the grove.

Cold metal meets my temples.

Spiders seek out my heart.

There is a light that guts in my mouth.

At night I found myself on a heath,

Stiffening with dirt and dust from the stars.

In the thicket of hazels

Crystal angels once more sounded.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Applicant
BY SYLVIA PLATH
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

For Love

by Robert Creeley

for Bobbie

Yesterday I wanted to

speak of it, that sense above  

the others to me

important because all

that I know derives

from what it teaches me.  

Today, what is it that  

is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own  

statement, wants to

turn away, endlessly

to turn away.

If the moon did not ...

no, if you did not

I wouldn’t either, but  

what would I not

do, what prevention, what  

thing so quickly stopped.  

That is love yesterday  

or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat

what you give me. I

have not earned it. Must  

I think of everything

as earned. Now love also  

becomes a reward so

remote from me I have

only made it with my mind.

Here is tedium,

despair, a painful

sense of isolation and  

whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image  

is only of the mind’s

vague structure, vague to me  

because it is my own.

Love, what do I think

to say. I cannot say it.

What have you become to ask,  

what have I made you into,

companion, good company,  

crossed legs with skirt, or  

soft body under

the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything  

but that which it wishes  

would come true, fears  

what else might happen in

some other place, some  

other time not this one.  

A voice in my place, an  

echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into

not the confession but  

the obsession I begin with  

now. For you

also (also)

some time beyond place, or  

place beyond time, no  

mind left to

say anything at all,

that face gone, now.

Into the company of love  

it all returns.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

All Night, All Night

by Delmore Schwartz

Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird

Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and

attitudes

The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,

Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced

On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident.

Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish

Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights

Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still

As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle,

Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar --

The bored center of this vision and condition looked and

looked

Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking

The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well

Of the great darkness under the slick glitter,

And he was only one among eight million riders and

readers.

And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum

Of the long determined passage passed through him

By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train

Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh--

The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing

The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image

Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light

Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence

Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession.

A bored child went to get a cup of water,

And crushed the cup because the water too was

Boring and merely boredom's struggle.

The child, returning, looked over the shoulder

Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder.

A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops

Drip down the fleece of many dinners.

And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew

The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified,

At regular intervals, post after post

Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees.

And then the bird cried as if to all of us:

0 your life, your lonely life

What have you ever done with it,

And done with the great gift of consciousness?

What will you ever do with your life before death's

knife

Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?

As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,

Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast

Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down,

An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:

This is the way that night passes by, this

Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable

abyss.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Night Where You No Longer Live

by Meghan O'Rourke

Was it like lifting a veil

And was the grass treacherous, the green grass

Did you think of your own mother

Was it like a virus

Did the software flicker

And was this the beginning

Was it like that

Was there gas station food

and was it a long trip

And is there sun there

or drones

or punishment

or growth

Was it a blackout

And did you still create me

And what was I like on the first day of my life

Were we two from the start

And was our time an entrance

or an ending

Did we stand in the heated room

Did we look at the painting

Did the snow appear cold

Were our feet red with it, with the wet snow

And then what were our names

Did you love me or did I misunderstand

Is it terrible

Do you intend to come back

Do you hear the world’s keening

Will you stay the night

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Night City

BY W. S. GRAHAM

Unmet at Euston in a dream

Of London under Turner’s steam

Misting the iron gantries, I

Found myself running away

From Scotland into the golden city.

I ran down Gray’s Inn Road and ran

Till I was under a black bridge.

This was me at nineteen

Late at night arriving between

The buildings of the City of London.

And the I (O I have fallen down)

Fell in my dream beside the Bank

Of England’s wall to be, me

With my money belt of Northern ice.

I found Eliot and he said yes

And sprang into a Holmes cab.

Boswell passed me in the fog

Going to visit Whistler who

Was with John Donne who had just seen

Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green.

Midnight. I hear the moon

Light chiming on St Paul’s.

The City is empty. Night

Watchmen are drinking their tea,

The Fire had burnt out.

The Plague’s pits had closed

And gone into literature.

Between the big buildings

I sat like a flea crouched

In the stopped works of a watch.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman