Transcript

TEDxMaui - W.S. Merwin - Connections

hello um what I really want to talk about his connections and uh not not connections you might have thought of necessarily uh but various kinds the and I want to start and end with poems so brace yourselves if you've never listened to poetry readings I mean it may not be quite what you expected uh you might even like it uh uh the let me see I I do need to have my glasses to see something up here um the one of the one of the things is you know is the connection I was absolutely shaken by Lisa Christine's extraordinary presentation earlier uh and this one of the connections one needs to question is what's the relation between poetry and something like that what's the relation between poetry and what's happening to the Earth and what we are doing to every other species of a life on Earth at this time uh what is the relation between our ability to speak if we if we can speak and the imagination uh and poetry uh the there are simple answers that people will immediately propose to you and there there are lots of people say oh you know and I've heard people in high places I've been told by them that poetry poet should stay out of Politics as they like to put it um I think well I can quite see why you would like that to be so but uh that's not a good reason for staying out of politics um it's a it's a temptation but uh there was a great French philosopher and activist Alber Kami who won the Nobel Prize so 40 45 years ago or so and died at 48 in a car accident uh amazing man he said at one point very simple um those of us who can speak have a responsibility to say something for those of us who can't and I think that's true of any talent that we have we don't need to turn into we don't need to have turn into propagandists that's the real danger because it ruins the whole thing you become predictable but you don't ever turn off the imagination from dealing with those things and my other great my other great model that I have always in mind is one of the very greatest poets who ever lived was Dante and Dante never gave up on speaking of the world as it was and the world and human human nature as it is and that that meant that meant uh speaking about political events of his time time too and great anger um so there is a connection there I don't I don't think there's ever a formula for these things and I think that the mistake is to expect there to be some neat formula and if you're if you're doing it right you're a good boy if you're not doing it right you're you're you're you're you're messing up you know you're being irresponsible I don't think that's true at all I think that the the clear the more clearly one pays attention to whatever Talent one has and everybody has a talent uh the uh the more clearly one pays attention to it the answer is going to come out of itself what is the connection between what I perceive what I have what I can do and the world itself and we're surrounded by people who never make who never want to consider that some of them are in high political positions too as you know uh so I want to begin by reading two poems which are a little bit uh they're different in in kind from each other but I think you'll see what the connection is the one is called it's a quite recent poem called convenience we were not made in its image but from the beginning we believed in it not for the pure appeasement of hunger but for its availability it could command our devotion Beyond question and without our consent and by whatever name we have called it in its name love has been set aside unmeasured time has been devoted to it forests have been erased and rivers poisoned and Truth has been relegated for it Wars have been San Sanctified by it we believe that we have a right to it even though it belongs to no one we carry a way back to it everywhere we are sure that it is saving something we consider it our personal savior all we have to pay for it is ourselves the other of these two two first poems is uh I'll make no explanation for I think it'll do that itself it's called a chain to her leg um and I'd like to dedicate the reading to to Lisa uh as a sort of small connection to what she's doing if we forget Topsy Topsy remembers when we forget her mother gun down in the forest and forget who killed her and to whom they sold the tusks the feet the good parts and how they died and where and what became of their children and what happened to the forest Topsy remembers when we forget how the wires were fastened on her feet in in in the name of the experiment the first time and how she smoldered and shuddered there with them all watching but did not die when we forget the lit cigarette the last laugh gave her lit end first as though it were a peanut for which joke she killed him we will not see home again when we forget the circus the tickets to see her die in the name of progress and Edison and the electric chair the mushroom cloud will go up over the desert where the Inola gay will take off after the chaplain's blessing the smoke from the black Ma's power plants will be visible from the Moon the forests will be gone the extinctions will will accelerate the polar bears will float farther and farther away and off to the edge of the world the Topsy remembers I think you see the connection between those and and the risk of writing out of anger um the anger about Topsy is something that I probably probably began in me when I was 6 or seven years old and learned the story and it's still the same right there now as I tell you this from the platform uh and we forget Topsy but what what Topsy remembers is what's what we're losing and that's we are what Topsy remembers um so the I want to make the move to to this is not the only possible attitude we need convenience we need to have enough money to put food on the table for the family we need to get to work we have we need to live in the world that we live in and it requires convenience it does not require the seven houses that Dick Cheney owns or some of the money that is that that some of the the people who are buying for public office now have made over the few years I don't think we need anything like that amount of money um so if we devote our lives to that that's convenience that's what we're talking about but there's an that's not the only possible attitude and I want to talk to you about the other side of it uh and I want to start by quoting one of the very great scientific minds of the past Century uh Albert Einstein uh and I had we had mutual friends when I was in the University because it was the same University and I followed I was very very interested in that man the wonderful man he said quite late in his life after all that we know what is important is the sense of wonder he said if we lose the sense of wonder we've lost all the rest of it so that's the other side that's that's peripheral to the economy that's peripheral to how you do all of these things that you're that the advertisements are urging you to do that's not part of that at all that's something something more closely related to um The Legend when uh shakyamuni looked up from under the bodh tree and saw the Morning Star what did he see he didn't see a political program uh or he didn't see a way of earning learning earning a million dollars fast he said now I see that I and all all living creatur Es are awake together we're awake at the same time we are we share the same moment of waking uh That's the basis of that whole thing and that's the basis of the imagination I think the imagination is what is are what is valuable about our species we may not be the smartest species and we certainly aren't the nicest in a lot of ways um but uh we the imagination which is there in what what he said and what Albert Einstein's talking about is not about convenience it's about something far deeper and more wonderful than that um and uh there's a to quote Blake again as Dr Greenberg endered by doing Blake in a letter to one of his patrons said that man that tree which uh fills me with tears of joy to another person person is simply a green object that gets in his way he said to such a p by such a person I will not set my my principles he said but he said to the to the man of imagination the tree is nature and nature is the imagination the the opposite attitude is to realize that we are we are here with every single living thing and there there if we if we do what the Book of Genesis says we should do which is to have dominion over the rest of of life it's a suicidal point of view uh the that the other one is the is the uh attitude of imagination and the attitude of imagination is not just writing poetry or writing anything but it's the basis of compassion of language of being able to say anything of being able to express anything of being able to recognize uh not for not recognize in the sense of information but recognize in the sense of connection uh that is uh and we have both of those things going on in this all the time but uh the economy is all based toward the one and I want to say don't ever forget the other because the other one is what you really are uh and so I want to pass to First reading reading two other uh kinds of poems two other poems two short poems they're both quite recent um first one is a love poem which there they ought to Exist by the way I started by saying that almost all political po poems are bad perfectly true uh almost all love poems are bad but I mean it's not a reason not to write love [Applause] poems late spring coming into the High room again after years after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of Lies after losses and feet on stairs after looking in mistakes and forgetting turning there thinking to find no one except those I knew finally I saw you sitting in white already waiting you of whom I had heard with my own ears since the beginning for whom more than once I had opened the door believing you were not far that's a that's a poem to to my wife Paula who's here um the and then the the last poem and I I think I've said enough about the connection between the two kinds of poems in in this this is a an even more recent poem it's one of the last poems in the last published book uh it's called rainlight all day the Stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you were alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are formed of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the W the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning thank you w [Music] [Applause]