 Welcome, viewers, to Focus, coming to you from here in the Burlington studio, Burlington, Vermont studio. We are Channel 17, Center for Media and Democracy. I'm your host, Margaret Harrington, of Focus. And, viewers, today we have a delightful visitor with us. It is the poet, Greg Delanti. Welcome, Greg Delanti. Welcome to the studio here in Burlington. Back again. Yes, back again. And, Greg, you live right here in Burlington, Vermont. And this is the latest volume of your poetry called Selected Delanti. Yes. And with a, so it has poems from the last 30 years of your working life. You asked how many years? 30, 30 years, isn't it? 40, really? 40 years, oh my gosh. 46. Yeah, you're right, 30. But there was, you know, there was poems before that as well, including in it when I was younger, like in my early 20s. So it goes back nearly 40 years. Yeah. And then you have, they were chosen and introduced by Archie Burnett. That's right. Archie is a great character, like, great, very, very respected. He did housements, collected, and Philip Larkin's complete. And he's doing Eliot at the moment. And I say, he's putting me on stilts. I'm like a fellow on stilts. He was the person that did them. And I'm delighted about an honoured that he did them. And then the publishers did a beautiful job, Lisa and Julie of Unjive. I mean, it's a beautiful looking book. Yes. It is inexpensive it's nearly 300 pages and it's only $19 and beautiful paper and the cover, everything is so gorgeous. Here it is. And I got it at the Phoenix bookstore here in Burlington. I mean, my dad was a printer and we read some of those poems, but it's, you know, sometimes, well, actually in all poems, how they look on the page, how they are placed on the page, the type of print and the space they're given on the page makes a difference to reading a poem. Sometimes if type is too small and stuff, it just shuts you out. But this is, I think, rather perfect for my poems, at least anyway. Yes. And most of all, the reader wants to be welcomed in, welcomed into the poem. Absolutely. Absolutely. And Greg, you're an immigrant from Ireland, from the County Cork, actually. Yeah. And you've been here, you've been poet in residence at St. Michael's College for 30 years. And could you start off this short time that we have with you with some of the immigrant poems? Sure. Well, I came here in 1986 and I got a job at St. Michael's College in 1987. But when I came here, first I was on a fellowship, a kind of an award I got, just a traveler around the United States. But I arrived in New York and I met friends of mine, all lifeguards, we used to lifeguard in the Kerry beaches. And so he was staying in the Bronx, where all the Irish generally were staying. So we did the pubs, you know, and this poem kind of came out of that. There is an Irish myth folklore of the birds fighting for who is going to be the king. And of course, everybody figured it would be the eagle. But a little rain, a small little bird, you don't have them in Vermont. Tiny bird got on the back of the rain and was so light that the eagle didn't realize it. And when the eagle flew as high as he could, the little bird flew up and he became off the back of the eagle and he became the king of the birds. No, that's just analogy, because America, the eagle and so forth. But there's other tie-ins as well, because my father worked in the eagle printing company. And I'll connect that a little bit later, maybe one of the poems. But this is the poem, at least. Okay. In the land of the eagle. Our first night here, we pubcrawled the Bronx. Still too new for us not to be enthralled by the street life and brew of all-night watering holes with names like the shamrock or Galway shawl, full of legals and illegals longing to go back, lowering pint after pint of their staggering Irishness, slanting the dub's winning point, cursing American Guinness. After that country for all men abandoned them, like the Gannett Abandoned, it's fledgling, not all of them make it. Those that do are more like the Wren who flew high off the eagle of folklore prevailing in the contentious sky. Beautiful. Pains quite a picture of immigrants. America is a country of immigrants, except for the poor. Native Americans are First Nations, and we kind of wiped them. We did a lot of harm to them. I won't say too much about that. The rest of America are immigrants, and so even if you're not Irish, this poem works. In fact, in a very metaphorically, we're all immigrants in life. We're all trying to get home somewhere in a spiritual kind of state. In the end, they're all set in the particular about things that we all experience in one way or another. That's a theme that runs through your poetry too, the theme of home. Where is home? Yes. Of course, there's no answer really. Sometimes it's with friends who you can be completely comfortable with and say what you want to say. Other times it's a place. I mean, Vermont is my home now. Burlington is I love. I love having a lovely house here and so on and so forth. And it's beautiful here. Politically, it's much better than most any other place. And Michael's have been really good to me, and I love it there. It's a nice community, and it does its best. And Burlington has lovely bars and restaurants, and it's so close. I can walk down and I cycle everywhere. I have no car, cycle to school as well. We really get to know you through these poems. What about your father, who was a compositor? So if you could go on to some of the poems. Yeah, sure. My dad, he died in 1984, but he was a compositor. And most young people will have a clue of what a compositor is. I don't mind what I like occasionally to call in. There's a little shop here on Ort Ave. And I like he still sits tight there at the star. And I like to call in there, but smell the ink and so forth. But this poem was originally set off. I went into the printing office at St. Michael's. And one of the guys working there was chatting to me. And I love this man. I just print in the ink. And it brought back me as a child being around the being around the composing room is what it was called. And they had all these terms like the hellbox, where you throw broken one type, which in itself, and then melt it down and recast into new type, which itself becomes a metaphor, ultimately, for us all recasting or melting down ourselves and recasting ourselves and making ourselves a new and also for the melting pot of America. So it had a multi layers as it were. So the first poem anyway came from just going, it was set off by going into the printing shop in Burlington in St. Michael's. A lot of terms in which we don't realize in our language come from printing like I'm out of sorts, which of course the sort is an asterisk in order of kind of signs in printing. And the printer would say I'm out of sorts. So that actually comes into language straight out of printing or another one, mind your peas and cues. Because when they were setting the type, it was upside down and back the front. And so it's easy to get peas and cues mixed up. Right, right. So for a lot of, a lot of these terms. But there's more of an origin to that I read here in your, in your volume that it meant also pints and quartz. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, because the printers were supposed to drink a lot. In fact, actually, you know, apparently, because originally way back 400 years ago, whenever along the time printing was discovered, they used to get a, because the metal in the air and stuff they were making it with the type and dealing with the type, there was a lot of stuff in the air that was not good for it. So they get it used to be given a point or alcohol so much by at the end of the day, so that it could slake their thirst. But it became a kind of, you know, like, like some trades, it become a way of life. My father liked to drink. And I like to drink instead. And I still drink and I can still drink. A lot of people can't anymore. But anyway, the compositor, all the terms are printing terms, but they should bring through in some way. Perhaps it's the smell of printing ink, sets me off out of memories jumbled font. Or maybe it's the printer's lingo. As he relates, how phrases came about. How, for instance, mind your peas and queues. Has as much to do with pints and quarts. And the printers were known for drink as it has to do with those descenders. But I don't say anything about how I discovered where widows and off friends, or out of sorts, came from the day my father unnoticed and unexpectedly set 30 on the bottom of his compositor's page. And left me mystified about the origins of that hint. How to measure a line gauge. And how, since he was forced to go, he slowly and without a word turned from himself into everyone. As we turn into that last zero, before finally passing on to the stone man. That's a marvelous poem. It's a deep poem. Yeah, it's kind of held off perhaps by the language and so forth. By the depth of feeling that went into the, you're composing it. Yeah, yeah. And as you know, some of the poems are humorous, you know. I mean, there is a range of humor and techniques all through the book. But I often think, when I'm going to read a humorous one here, but humor as, I hope I can remember this now, but as Byron, the great Irishman, Byron, said, if I laugh at any mortal thing, it is that I will not weep. No, no. Is that the right? I laugh that I'm not weep. No, no. If I, I shouldn't go into this now, but we're getting, I shouldn't quote in Byron, but if I laugh at any mortal thing, it is that I may not weep. Is that correct? Yes, yes. And so there you are. So we'll read a funny one, strike dink and then another funny one. Okay. Strike dink is not a printing one. When I was working in the printing compositor's floor, you know, there was a trick that the guys would play on you and the printers, the printers, so they'd send me down for a tin of strike dink. It's like they're sending in a construction work down for a young fellow down for a glass hammer. Okay. Do you understand? Yeah. And I fell for it. And the two printers here, compositor's or apprentices, that's also word for devil in printing. So there's a lot of tie-ups here. There's more of it, but I won't go into it, you know, but I'll read that here anyway. Strike dink. I'm smack dab in the old Tabla Raza days, bamboozled by the books adults bow over. Musing if their eyes light upon the white are black spaces. A boyhood later, still rent small on the top story of the Eagle printing company. I see books pour out and believe that if I fish in them, I'll catch the salmon of knowledge, tall till to us at school, out of the river of wards. And like Fiona, I'll taste my burning hand and abracadabra, I'll fad on what's below the surface. But if I'm born, it's later that day, on my first day as page boy, spaced from fixing leads. The devil's Fred and Dommie types up a new book, dispatch me down to Christie call and on the box floor for a thin of striped ink. I take the bait and watch floors of laboring women and men flit by, caught in the lift's mesh of exes, drowned out by the machine's hollow balloon, somehow between floors. The elevator comes out, the warning light winking, and I'm stuck on my message and still have no inkling. I love that. That's very playful and evocative of times past with even the elevator, the exes. Yes. And also allusions to again there, if you notice the Wren and the Eagle, because he worked in the printing company and other metallurgies from Ireland. But can I read a poem to my son? I would love that. Yes. Since I've read one from my father and then I read one from my mother, maybe. And then maybe we get one or two other ones in if there's time. And the alien. Yes, I see that. The shape of birth. Okay. This is to a child in a ultrasound, seeing the photograph and so forth. I mean, he's 16 now, he's a lovely boy, but the alien. I'm back again, scrutinizing the milky way of your ultrasound, scanning the dark matter, the nothingness, that now the head says chocolate block with quarks and squarks, gravitons and gravitini, photons and fortinos, or sprout, who are there inside the spacecraft of your man, the time capsule of this printout, hurling and whirling towards us. It's all daft on this earth, or alien who art in the heavens, or Martian, or little green man, where anxious to make contact, to ask diverse questions about the heaven them you hail from, to discuss the whole shebang of the beginning and end, the pre-big bang on time, before you forget the why and lie of thy first place. And our friend to say welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die for you even, that we pray you're not here to subdue us, that we put away all ray guns, missiles, attitude, and share our world with you, little big head, if only you stay. So beautiful. But would you like me, will I do a poem in Irish maybe perhaps? Yes, well, will I read them all? One of your translations? Well, why don't you read one of your poems to your mother or about your mother now since you're in your family now? Yeah, yeah. There's actually three books within them. I mean, they all take from different books, but I always think of the three books. One is the Hellbox, which is the world of my father and the male. The second is the Blindstage, which is the world of the female and my mother and wife and child and baby and so forth. And the third is the world of the child, the chip of birth. So I always think of them as a kind of a trilogy. It wasn't meant like that, but it turned out like that, you know. But there are poems, other poems within them, and then there are political poems and so forth. This poem, I had one of the jobs of reading, or sorry, you know, when you were a kid, you were asked to do certain chores. One of my little chores was that I had to tread the needle for my mother when she was sewing because her eyes weren't great, and my brothers and my father's eyes were also not great. No, mine aren't so great either, but that was my job. And so this poem comes out of that. There's a number of things in it. The Rag and Bone Man. Well, we did have a Rag and Bone Man come to the park where I lived, in Sleemish Park, it was called, sort of Bourbon estate, on the outskirts of Cork City. And the Rag and Bone Man will come around, and you bring clothes to them. And previous to that, you'd bring bones and so forth, and they'd be melted down and glue would be made and so forth but now, my time when I was a child was just rags, but he was still called a Rag and Bone Man. So there's a lot of things in this. I wasn't particularly good at school, so it's mentioned here, and Amidon means fool. And there you are. Funny story, I'll tell you after I read this. To my mother Eileen, I'm treading the eye of the needle for you again. That is my specially appointed task, my gift that you gave me. Ma, watch me slip this camel of wards through. Yes, rich we are still, even if your needlework has long since gone with the Rag and Bone Man. And Da never came home one day. Or Dan, work, work, work, lose yourself in work. That's what he'd say. Okay, okay. Ma, listen, I can hear the sticks of our fire spit like corn turning into popcorn with the brown insides of rotten teeth. We sit in our old sleeved mish house. Norman is just born. He's in the pen. I raise the needle to the light and lick the thread to stiffen the limp wards. I peer through the eye, focus, put everything out of my head. I shut my right eye and thread. I'm important now. A lightly lad instead of the Omidon at Dread School. I have the eye, haven't I? The knack? I'm Prince Threader. I missed it. That's right. Concentrate, concentrate. Enough yakity yak. There, there, Ma. Look, here's the threaded needle back. So tell me what the funny story is. Mammy was, my mother was still alive. And my mother was a bit embarrassed about me. Well, I certainly had to start about me writing poems, what I do in my life and so forth. I mean, rightfully so, but there was huge battles in the house. And I told her I was, I didn't even just say it was going to be a portal. I said it was going to be a great portal. I mean, you have to be a bit arrogant when you're young to get through a lot of the things. And even now perhaps. But she, she, when I, she, I don't know how she saw the poem. Maybe she saw it probably somewhere I don't remember, but I did a pair in a later book called The Blind Stitch. And she said, she taught my brother. She says, what's that poem about? She says, what's she saying about? What's he saying about us? Or when I say the, with the brown in size of rotten teeth. Is he saying we have rotten teeth? And he did more. He taught me this afterwards. My brother, you know what I mean? We were laughing about it. But in the end, she was proud. God, I think, you know, she couldn't do much about it anyway. She knew that. But she was, she lived up to about 10 years ago. And she saw, I mean, she saw me develop into making life out of it, you know, and she was pleased with that. It's wonderful in this poem how you bring us back to that moment that you're looking, in this time, back to that time. The book is so beautiful. Well, it's also a poem about writing, of course, you know what I mean? Because, you know, I mean, I suppose it's a kind of subtext in the sense that my mother didn't really believe in poetry and didn't really read it and so forth. But she was very happy in the end that I did manage it, it seems. And she was just worried about money and how I'd make a living and naturally, if dad and my son did the same, I'd be worried about them, too. But I was lucky and I managed to make the best of my luck and also the work I did. And so a lot of things have to come together. I've been very fortunate. And you have many translations in here, too? Yeah, yeah. But are the Greek plays, the Orestes? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the Irish, the Sean O'Reardon, right? Yeah, Sean O'Reardon. There's a lot of Sean O'Reardon. Would you like to read one of those? I would actually like to read one of my friends, Liam O'Merrilla, if that would be okay. Of course. And Liam is sick at the moment, very ill. And he's perhaps my closest friend in Ireland and great friend. And we grew up in the same school, same side of the city. And he writes in Irish, I write in English. So we're like the two wings of perhaps Pegasus in Ireland, like it's twin languages. And so he's a dear friend. And so he's a confident as well. So I just want to think of him now. And when this comes up, I'll send him the link even. Yes. But he came and read it, said Michael's a few times. And a great, great post, really. Okay, but. Does he write in Irish? Yes. Excuse me now. Here we go. It's called, it's just, it's a, what is it? It's a simple poem, really simple, but more to it than just being simple. What is it? I go from room to room around the house, looking for something. And to be honest, I won't know what it is till I find it. It's not the bread tin, nor the coarse brown flour, nor the fine white flour. Though I take them out and measure them on the scales and bake a single loaf. It's not any book I was devouring, if memory serves me correctly. While I put down absent-mindedly, although I stand at the shelves and scan the book stacks and fall to my knees. It's not any missing key. I wasn't going out. I didn't leave anything on, although I'm shuffling from room to room, calming the whole house for something. And it's nothing, quietly mourning. I misread a line there, actually, which I put down absent. I sort of said, which, but. Do you want to read it over again? I would love to, for them to make this. What it is, I go from room to room around the house, looking for something. And to be honest, I won't know what it is till I find it. It's not the bread tin, nor the coarse brown flour, nor the fine white flour. Though I take them out and measure them on the scales and bake a single loaf. It's not any book I was devouring, if memory serves me correctly. Which I put down absent-mindedly, although I stand at the shelves and scan the book stacks and fall to my knees. It's not any missing key. I wasn't going out. I didn't leave anything on, although I'm shuffling from room to room, calming the whole house for something. And it's nothing, quietly mourning. That's Leomond Merhula, my good friend. Yeah, there are translations which spread through the book from Aristophanes and Euripides to a modern Greek poet who lives in Crete, sorry, lives in Cyprus, Tyriacus Harelem Bides, and then poems from the Gaelic from Aureadon and more contemporary poets. But through the book, you know, as part of the work, I suppose, in a certain way of my world. Yes, your world and the themes are also from the Greek plays too, right? The mother-son relationships in your poems in English. There's a lot of tie-in even, but even... I'm going to finish up with a poem a little, I don't know when we're to finish, but mentioning Euripides is, I translated the play, The Orestes, which I wanted to call humankind or the family. But it's a part of that translation, and then it's referenced really in one of the last poems in the book. But you wouldn't know that. I mean, you can read either without knowing either of them, but there's a lot of that going on in the book as well. There's interplay between poems, also illusions and references and sometimes playfulness, you know? Yeah, well, as you said, you can read the poem by itself without getting all the connections, but also reading the whole volume, it's a joy to find the connections throughout, and the themes throughout your decades of writing. I mean, I've tried to hide, in my writing, I've tried to hide the cleverness and the kind of tricks and so forth. There's some contemporary poets, I won't name them, but they're all very clever on the top, but they're too dazzling and there's nothing that much underneath it, and if there is, you're too upset by it. So I rather hide the things and keep the cleverness inside. I mean, there's things like paladrons and everything in this book, but that's for somebody who perhaps a critic are not to find in those things, but there are other meanings in the book that are hidden, and that's where I would like them. Frost did that in a different way. I mean, Frost hid a lot of his more deeper and disturbing world. I mean, there's the great, what is it, Stopping By Wood in the Snow Evening, which of course everybody thought was a lovely little bucolic poem, and of course it was a poem about suicide, you know, and it came out later on. I mean, but you know, so that's, I'm in the right place for that kind of an influence. Well, the thing is that you let the reader in. You invite us in so that we can join you in the poem, so that you don't put up barriers to us. No, I actually tried to break the ink barrier, that's the way you always term. Actually, Seamus used to like me saying that term, that the poem will break the ink barrier, where you realize that it's not a poem anymore, but it's a spirit or something behind it, and you've forgotten the ink and it's inside in you, and that comes through even the quality of a book, the type of a book, but also the poems themselves, if they're worthwhile, will do that in their kind of spirit life for want of a world, you know. I love that. And would you read the sock mystery now? Oh, sure. This is in the part of the book, Uncollected Poems. Yeah, these are poems I never put in books, you know, for one reason or another. They just didn't fit her, you know, a poem. I mean, it's all, I mean, in a way, all books and all poets, poems, all together in a chronological way, perhaps usually, but are all just one long poem. I mean, I'm not the first to say that, WBA said that, you know. But for sure. But the sock mystery, and we all have problems with socks. I mean, even the way it held me up before I came up, I was looking in the sock drawer to find a matching pair, you know. Anyway, this is a poem that came out of that, but there's a bit more to it, but I won't say. The sock mystery. There should be an asylum for single socks lost, dejected, turned in on themselves. The twin sock soulmate, doppelganger, gone AWOL on the lam, slipping through a time space warp, somewhere within the module of the washing machine, or dryer rattling in the cellar's deep space. The one never to be found again, gone, we know not where, to the afterlife of socks. Sock carderous, the elzium of Argyle, the heaven of crew, gold toe, tennis, winter woolly, summer wear. Surely there's no porgatory or hell for socks, even for absconders who walk out on partners, family, before their souls are worn threadbare, their number up. The odd time it happens, these socks get lonely for the earth, and weeks, months later, the prodigals neatly reappear under a bed, cushion, wardrobe, only to discover their partners have disappeared, passed on, unable to make it alone. But how good it is to see socks united once more, tucked into each other, close, touching. At one, the deserter promising to stay put, not to take a hike, not to do a runner this time. No greater joy no greater joy is known than on these occasions. Such dancing, such cavorting, such jubilation in the kingdom of socks. A friend said to me, a very good critic turns around and said, there's a poem about something real. You were joking. Well you talk about friends, you have many poems to your friends and to the great poet, Seamus Haney, who was your mentor, right? A mentor? Well I love Seamus, I don't like the word mentor in general, excuse me, it's just because it puts something in a category and I don't like being categorized. Seamus was a close friend, I was lucky enough to get to know him. Actually I got to know him when he came to Burlington and made a great term and he wrote about it afterwards and he used to ring on Christmas Day to say happy Christmas and over the years. I think perhaps we like to have a drink together and stuff and I don't think that he had many of his own, a lot of them were gone, so he liked when I went there and I went there when they came here to be able to relax and talk about the poetry and all other portraits basically and also talk about some of the things in the poetry world that maybe we're better off not other people to hear them, do you understand? It's a kind of difficult kind of world really but it means great world and we were both lucky and I was lucky enough to know him and I was lucky enough to be in his company and he helped a lot of people, not just me, but he was a beautiful man really, apart from the poems and the writing, the prose and so he came here twice and then he came to stay in the house a few times with Mary's wife and I used to stay in Dublin when I went there but I don't know why I, there is a poem here, yeah he dedicated, I gave you a book actually well ago of Human Chain which was his last book while he was alive and it is a poem in it to me to Gregory of Carcass which is a poem which is a character in the Greek anthology which are all supposed to be translations but they're all myself and we used to joke so there's a lot of different characters and it's supposed to be a new form book of the Greek anthology which there's 16 now but I call this one Greek anthology book 17 and I read that actually but he in his last book as I say published he dedicated a poem to Gregory of Carcass who was Sweeney actually and Mads, there was a Sweeney poem and Mad Sweeney was kind of the mad poet I meant, I've actually had two poems dedicated to me and in both cases I'm Sweeney he's speaking to worry me like really it was something but I talked to where we left he said he dedicated it because of, because my own Greek poems were kind of characters like Sweeney I suppose sometimes you know and anyway and no we we have to find it but there's a poem in here by so called Heenius yes you know excuse me what is the name of the poem you're looking for there's two of them actually um sorry which it's evading me right now would it be well it's oh here I have it concealment I have it okay great this is set in Greece when I was there and there's a few references Morrisville well of course we know Morrisville here Darinan is where I love to go and and tomb is where Seamus was and Adelphi of course and also there's an illusion to his own bog poems where the butter was found and so forth and anyway concealment by supposedly Heenius a man walked past we practically brushed shoulders the lane was so narrow I nodded muttered a calamara but he chose to look ahead ignore me I've seen that look that demeanor before always in rural towns villages tomb Morrisville Darinan Delphi not simply the buttoned up look that is the result of living in a small community but the face that stubbornly shuts out the invasion of sightseers yuppie realtors outsiders it conceals the gold bar of butter rancid or no left buried in the bog safe from any museum the last salted treasure of the last word um could you read blues for us sure and one of the uh the on the poems not in the uncollected poems sure um it's a sonnet uh written a while ago but then redrafted recently um I see two african-american black um students outside uh Thai prince and many and um I I recalled in Irish the word for black person is blue far gorum blue they don't in Ireland the Irish language is not called person black it's blue so I the poem came out of that then really also came out of a time when there was a lot of well there is a lot of racism but there was a lot of um stuff going on in the south and then of course our present president and so forth um blues there's a brilliant but intangible laser light blue you must have seen it glistening or fresh snow something akin but not quite the same as you see shine off the back of a barn swallow the star and moon blinked night sky the neck of the male mallard the halo of a gas stove flame a certain neon butterfly or the back of a blue bottle fly this ineffable glow I noticed again seeing students both unwhite mania and Thai prince shimmering blue light as they high-fived by the international garden outside my office I didn't cotton on till then why in the Irish language a black brother and sister are called blue or my beautiful blue sister and brother one well do you can you do one more sure at least in which which poem do you want to do for the for our can I finish with two of course yes um one called pay you know I'm I give up my car and I my house is fast fossil fuel no gas no oil heat pump and solar but um and I've gone to standing rock and and uh and maybe be going to Nebraska next now because of the pipe that it's back on schedule um uh and did civil disobedience with Bill McKibben and other people outside the White House and got arrested it's important in my life the poems it's a life the poems are my life but I am true to my life so the poems can be true to to to poetry um so it's all connected really it's all a kind of a paladrome really one's life the writing and the the um and the what and the life excuse me um um patient short little poem okay 169 the snow has melted clean off the mountain it's winter still yet another indication that Gaia is in trouble the things aren't sound the rocky mountaintop shines like the bald head of a woman after chemo who wills herself out of her hospital bed to take in the trees the squirrels the commotion around town sip bear in a dive smile at the child ogling her shiny head wishing it didn't take all this dying to love life and maybe we should leave it at that would you like me to read another one what would you like well you said two if you wanted no no I don't mind I mean I'll do what you want me to do but I think we're are we out of time no it's not the time it's what you want to oh well I go on if you want to finish with patient that last beautiful poem amazing poems or uh canticle of the song yes or hellboxer a bit too long isn't it yeah the canticle of the song I actually gonna finish I'm gonna add two another one excuse me and then you can just get rid of them and when you wait it umbilical and then the canticle of the song is a more powerful and positive poem perhaps umbilical is a sonnet um addressing really myself you bike most everywhere these days worry of your part in the latest war the slaughter of innocence the various wily ways you've grown used to complicity's thither the gas pump is an umbilical cord sucking the life out of exhausted terra mater you read about leaders ready to award the future and mammon her body smother her in her own fumes you know the reward the fate of those who killed their mothers remember rastis you translated to humankind down swoop the arenas the avenging daughters driving tormented rastis out of his mind and no escaping the furies now the ever so kind and I finish up with canticle of the song which is a kind of a as I say a secular take of um of uh Francis of Assisi's canticle of the song um I start with chalk it down that's a number on Irish saying this like saying that's it like that that's it that's it chalk it down that's that's gonna happen that's for sure you understand okay I think you hear some people use it here but I certainly my students who I've asked don't don't know it right right I'm glad you you told it what what it means but okay when so I'm going to say thank you and we're going to end with your saying chalk it down okay sure and so so thank you so much for being my guest again and and for this beautiful book Selected Alante and this beautiful work of art and poetry and solace and enlightenment thank you so much and come back again and I would love to and thank you margo for all you do and also Kevin and and also the the library here Barbara down in the library is doing a night for the book on February 16th at seven o'clock in the Fletcher and anybody's welcome I'll give a small reading and short reading and so forth and there'll be wine and they'll make an occasion out of it what date is that February February 16th seven it's a Friday at 7 p.m. okay anybody's welcome okay wonderful um canticle of the song a secular take with apologies to Francis of Assisi chalk it down never so much as now should we praise the maker first let us praise brother son he is the light that elites out of every night he is the radiant first offspring of the one next let us pray sister moon and all the stars like manna showering down from the heavens let us pray whether himself the twins air and wind cloud and sky who sustain all creatures what about their sibling water she is so humble she's hardly noticed we'd be nothing without her likewise or or friend fire and lord mother earth carrying her basket overflowing with sundry vicules to feed all her offspring the ant cow rat bee vulture bored of paradise crow whale camel rainbow trout all our close relatives applaud also those who work for her sake especially now we need them more than ever they know we have so little time that we've made our mother ill praise those who say there is hope still and those who struggle for peace peacefully there'll be crowned in the maker's goodness before the end which is always now and without end we could go on but let us finish by praising for their death for he is of the creator those who do not honor him bring him on us before our time yet those who struggle for our mother know another life may they thrive yeah i say chalk it down