Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman               MirrorsBy Jorge Luis Borges I have been horrified before all mirrorsnot just before the impenetrable glass,the end and the beginning of that space,inhabited by nothing but reflections, but faced with specular water, mirroringthe other blue within its bottomless sky,incised at times by the illusory flightof inverted birds, or troubled by a ripple, or face to face with the unspeaking surfaceof ghostly ebony whose very hardnessreflects, as if within a dream, the whitenessof spectral marble or a spectral rose. Now, after so many troubling yearsof wandering beneath the wavering moon,I ask myself what accident of fortunehanded to me this terror of all mirrors– mirrors of metal and the shrouded mirrorof sheer mahogany which in the twilightof its uncertain red softens the facethat watches and in turn is watched by it. I look on them as infinite, elementalfulfillers of a very ancient pactto multiply the world, as in the actof generation, sleepless and dangerous. They extenuate this vain and dubious worldwithin the web of their own vertigo.Sometimes at evening they are clouded overby someone's breath, someone who is not dead. The glass is watching us. And if a mirrorhangs somewhere on the four walls of my room,I am not alone. There's an other, a reflectionwhich in the dawn enacts its own dumb show. Everything happens, nothing is rememberedin those dimensioned cabinets of glassin which, like rabbits in fantastic stories,we read the lines of text from right to left. Claudius, king for an evening, king in a dream,did not know he was a dream until the dayon which an actor mimed his felonywith silent artifice, in a tableau. Strange, that there are dreams, that there are mirrors.Strange that the ordinary, worn-out waysof every day encompass the imaginedand endless universe woven by reflections. God (I've begun to think) implants a promisein all that insubstantial architecturethat makes light out of the impervious surfaceof glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams. God has created nights well-populatedwith dreams, crowded with mirror images,so that man may feel that he is nothing morethan vain reflection. That's what frightens us.                         Spanish; trans. Alastair Reid  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Crossroads in the PastBY JOHN ASHBERYThat night the wind stirred in the forsythia bushes,but it was a wrong one, blowing in the wrong direction.“That’s silly. How can there be a wrong direction?‘It bloweth where it listeth,’ as you know, just as we dowhen we make love or do something else there are no rules for.” I tell you, something went wrong there a while back.Just don’t ask me what it was. Pretend I’ve dropped the subject.No, now you’ve got me interested, I want to knowexactly what seems wrong to you, how something could seem wrong to you. In what way do things get to be wrong?I’m sitting here dialing my cellphonewith one hand, digging at some obscure pebbles with my shovelwith the other. And then something like braids will stand out, on horsehair cushions. That armchair is really too lugubrious.We’ve got to change all the furniture, fumigate the house,talk our relationship back to its beginnings. Say, you knowthat’s probably what’s wrong—the beginnings concept, I mean.I aver there are no beginnings, though there were perhaps somesometime. We’d stopped, to look at the poster the movie theater had placed freestanding on the sidewalk. The lobby cardsdrew us in. It was afternoon, we found ourselvessitting at the end of a row in the balcony; the theater was unexpectedlycrowded. That was the day we first realized we didn’t fullyknow our names, yours or mine, and we left quietlyamid the gray snow falling. Twilight had already set in.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Fears and Scruples  (1876)by Robert Browning  Here's my case. Of old I used to love him,    This same unseen friend, before I knew:Dream there was none like him, none above him,—    Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.Loved I not his letters full of beauty?    Not his actions famous far and wide?Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;    Present, he would find me at his side.Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,    Only knew of actions by hearsay:He himself was busied with my betters;    What of that? My turn must come some day."Some day" proving—no day! Here's the puzzle.    Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?He's so busied! If I could but muzzle    People's foolish mouths that give me pain!"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?    Ask the experts! How they shake the headO'er these characters, your friend's inditing—    Call them forgery from A to Z!"Actions? Where's your certain proof" (they bother)    "He, of all you find so great and good,He, he only, claims this, that, the other    Action—claimed by men, a multitude?"I can simply wish I might refute you,    Wish my friend would,—by a word, a wink,—Bid me stop that foolish mouth,—you brute you!    He keeps absent,—why, I cannot think.Never mind! Though foolishness may flout me,    One thing's sure enough: 'tis neither frost,No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me    Thanks for truth—though falsehood, gained—though lost.All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,    For that dream's sake! How forget the thrillThrough and through me as I thought "The gladlier    Lives my friend because I love him still!"Ah, but there's a menace some one utters!    "What and if your friend at home play tricksPeep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters?    Mean your eyes should pierce through solid bricks?"What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy?    Lay on you the blame that bricks—conceal?Say 'At least I saw who did not see me,    Does see now, and presently shall feel'?""Why, that makes your friend a monster!" say you:    "Had his house no window? At first nod,Would you not have hailed him?" Hush, I pray you!    What if this friend happen to be—God?  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seamanhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45470/crossing-brooklyn-ferry   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanOne Night in BalthazarBy Fanny Howe The hotel bar downstairswas dirty and dark and almost emptyexcept for him whom I didn’t know I lost my balancebecause evil is aroused by absence  Outside on the islanda brick city had grown up and old A person could only nibble on its shadows  Where was my beloved? The cornerstone was familiarbut unrecognizableand I didn’t understand why infinity was seeping into my hair   Somebody said:“He’s out of his bottle” I guess it meantTemporarily out of service and empty. But then there was Arsenebeside the last remaining cabinwandering with his eyes on the camera  Dynamite in his pocketand a piece of thread to trap a rabbit.  Evil is a growing thingIt has its own gravityand never answers to its nameIt is a hole into chaos. It is real Arsene held me in his armsHe was drunk as usualand his nipple smelled of rum But still I loved him—loved him madly!—as if he was the one  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanA Terror is More Certain . . .BY BOB KAUFMANA terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs Iknow, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walkaround in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & readgreat books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books ofthe month & have wifeys that are lousy in bed & never realize howbad my writing is because i am poor & symbolize myself.A certain desirable is more terror to me than all that’s rare. Howcome they don’t give an academic award to all the movie stars thatdie? they’re still acting, ain’t they? even if they are dead, it shouldnot be held against them, after all they still have the public on theirside, how would you like to be a dead movie star & have people sit-ting on your grave?A rare me is more certain than desirable, that’s all the terror, thereare too many basketball players in this world & too much progressin the burial industry, lets have old fashioned funerals & standaround & forgive & borrow wet handkerchiefs, & sneak out fordrinks & help load the guy into the wagon, & feel sad & make adate with the widow & believe we don’t see all of the people sink-ing into the subways going to basketball games & designing babysitters at Madison Square Garden.A certain me is desirable, what is so rare as air in a Poem, why can’ti write a foreign movie like all the other boys my age, I confess to allthe crimes committed during the month of April, but not to savemy own neck, which is adjustable, & telescopes into any size noose,I’m doing it to save Gertrude Stein’s reputation, who is secretlyflying model airplanes for the underground railroad stern gang ofoz, & is the favorite in all the bouts . . . not officially opened yetHolland tunnel is the one who writes untrue phone numbers.A desirable poem is more rare than rare, & terror is certain, whowants to be a poet & work a twenty four hour shift, they never askyou first, who wants to listen to the radiator play string quartets allnight. I want to be allowed not to be, suppose a man wants toswing on the kiddie swings, should people be allowed to stab himwith queer looks & drag him off to bed & its no fun on top of alady when her hair is full of shiny little machines & your assreflected in that television screen, who wants to be a poet if youfuck on t.v. & all those cowboys watching.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanAubadeby Philip LarkinI work all day, and get half-drunk at night.    Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.    In time the curtain-edges will grow light.    Till then I see what’s really always there:    Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,    Making all thought impossible but how    And where and when I shall myself die.    Arid interrogation: yet the dreadOf dying, and being dead,Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse    —The good not done, the love not given, time    Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because    An only life can take so long to climbClear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;    But at the total emptiness for ever,The sure extinction that we travel toAnd shall be lost in always. Not to be here,    Not to be anywhere,And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraidNo trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast moth-eaten musical brocadeCreated to pretend we never die,And specious stuff that says No rational beingCan fear a thing it will not feel, not seeingThat this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,    No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,    Nothing to love or link with,The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision,    A small unfocused blur, a standing chill    That slows each impulse down to indecision.    Most things may never happen: this one will,    And realisation of it rages outIn furnace-fear when we are caught without    People or drink. Courage is no good:It means not scaring others. Being brave    Lets no one off the grave.Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.    It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,    Have always known, know that we can’t escape,    Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring    In locked-up offices, and all the uncaringIntricate rented world begins to rouse.The sky is white as clay, with no sun.Work has to be done.Postmen like doctors go from house to house.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanPoems Read:The Solstice By W.S. MerwinDer Leiermann by Wilhelm Müller&Snowfall by Mark Strand  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman I remember walking out of the ocean. What struggle!Millions of mollusk years and shell games that hurt.I remember getting up from all fours and looking downon all my astonished variously shaped former friends.Not one of them wanted to look up at me now I was up.Bipedal and lonely until there were a bunch of others.I remember the first scene in 2001 where I killed another.I remember that every time I bent down to be closerto the busy world of things that crawled loped or burrowedI was condescending and they moved away from me.I remember towering over everything that wasn’t me.I remember the day I howled in pain because my back gave out.That was the day I knew my body was weakly hingedat the place where it first stood up, and I wanted down again.Lord, help me walk on all fours again. I know that it’s late.We only grow taller now like the towers we can’t stop building.Since we got language not one nonhuman creature deignsto speak to us though we pretend in vain to understand them.Animals find it more understandable when we shoot themthen when we kneel down and pretend we are their friends.We do kneel down often to pray not to commune but praythat we won’t suffer from the back pain that is our sign of Cain.I remember that I can still return to water and do flipsbut I’m in charge now of all the things I covered over.I remember kneeling to gods who were so tall I couldn’t see them.Their heads were in the clouds, we barely reached their sandals.Even the mono god was so tall he dropped the tablets on Mosesand made lightning to scare us all to the death we knew was coming.In the little world I live in I sell diminishment at one dollar an inchand practice quadripedal yoga every morning in my living roomhoping to walk one day into the street with my quadripedal brood.It will be the day of no pain and of trading language for nozzling.If we succeed it won’t be so hard to hope that learning screens hurtsless than when we first left the ocean, equally pushed by hubris.Our new weak spot is memory. A bad back and a lousy memorymay smooth our way to becoming humble and wild again and good.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Three poems from Alphabet de soleilsCThe banner of your body floats in the Brandenburg wind.An old woman wants to come in, Ican see her through the door, her red felt handpressing in vain on the latch, scrapsof her cries come at me like the barbaricsong of a violin mending the night;I’m going to slip a rose under the doora black-blooded rose, maybe she’ll go away?And I could wallow in the bramble hammockbut her voice hiccups: OpheliaMy name is Ophelia, open the door, O-phe-lia…—What do I care about her grotesque distortionsWhat lie will she bring me? Whydoesn’t she extend it to me through the sheetsof sand the way she extends her name…OpheliaOphelia, her shadow ricochets in the auraof my dusk. Ophelia, her voice grateslike a leper’s rattle, philia, figlia…KLet’s catapult the conchoidal colocynthLet’s catapult the choephori of the coliddors of the tifthand the mitten cruncher, the tomcat cruncher, crunchers of sheepnote cruncher, crunch-in-your-mouth and in arms and in deaths.Let’s catapult the lynx and the oriole’s cochineal mantillalet’s catapult the mangoand the mongoose, shoo!OI’ve plunged my insatiable thirst into the seaweed of your body at rest on the anvil, splendid carrion, treasure of the Galapagos I’ve plunged my hands into your entrails and taken out the Black Lady’s stone dress, stones of grasses, of water and sky, stones of suns and sons.I’ve plunged my hands into your womb, I’ve taken out the wooden horse, white as a star, its tulip harness.I’ve plunged my hands and face into your rotting flesh and taken out your heart gnawed by a big cat, your heart that continues to beat in the pit of my hands more alive than Koh-i-Noor, more precious than the sea’s chariot.I’ve embraced your stiff breasts, beautiful as permanence, and your mouth, crocus of ash said: hate.Your eyes repeated it again as I raised your eyelids oh! Madeleine.Then with a turn I excavated the pearl inlaid in your temple.What erupted were voracious breezes that made your mind a tatter of blue.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Untitled [Do you still remember: falling stars]Do you still remember: falling stars,how they leapt slantwise through the skylike horses over suddenly held-out hurdlesof our wishes—did we have so many?—for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;almost every gaze upward becamewedded to the swift hazard of their play,and our heart felt like a single thingbeneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—and was whole, as if it would survive them!  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman"the distant steps"By Cesar Vallejo my father sleeps. his august frontispiece  portrays a gentle heart;it is now so placid...  if there's something bitter, should be me..  there is solitude in our home; we pray;  there is no buzz today to share.  my father awakes, as it resoundsthe Egypt's gap, the farewell with no meaning..  now it is so close;  if there's something far on, should be me.  then my mother walks beyond the gardens,  enjoying this feel now already disenchanted.  she is so delicate,  fluid, brief and beloved.   the solitude in our home has no riots,  no news, no flora, without child roots.  and if something is broken at afternoon  which bends and breaks  are those two leaned old folks.  for them my heart still stands.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowskiyour life is your lifedon’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.be on the watch.there are ways out.there is light somewhere.it may not be much light butit beats the darkness.be on the watch.the gods will offer you chances.know them.take them.you can’t beat death butyou can beat death in life, sometimes.and the more often you learn to do it,the more light there will be.your life is your life.know it while you have it.you are marvelousthe gods wait to delightin you.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Shadwell Stairby Wilfred Owen I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair.      Along the wharves by the water-house,      And through the cavernous slaughter-house,I am the shadow that walks there.  Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,      And eyes tumultuous as the gems      Of moons and lamps in the full ThamesWhen dusk sails wavering down the pool.  Shuddering the purple street-arc burns      Where I watch always; from the banks      Dolorously the shipping clanksAnd after me a strange tide turns.  I walk till the stars of London wane      And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.      But when the crowing syrens blareI with another ghost am lain.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production, Composition and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanThe Danceby Wendell BerryI would have each couple turn,join and unjoin, be lostin the greater turningof other couples, wovenin the circle of a dance,the song of long time flowingover them, so they may return,turn again in to themselvesout of desire greater than their own,belonging to all, to each,to the dance, and to the songthat moves them through the night.What is fidelity? To whatdoes it hold? The pointof departure, or the turning roadthat is departure and absenceand the way home? What we areand what we were onceare far estranged. For thosewho would not change, timeis infidelity. But we are marrieduntil death, and are betrothedto change. By silence, so,I learn my song. I earnmy sunny fields by absence, onceand to come. And I love youas I love the dance that brings youout of the multitudein which you come and go.Love changes, and in change is true.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman THE HOLLOW MENby T. S. EliotMistah Kurtz-he dead.A penny for the Old GuyWe are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, when We whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar Shape without form shade without colour,Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;Those who have crossedWith direct eyes to death's other KingdomRemember us--if at all-- not as lost Violent souls, but onlyAs the hollow menThe stuffed men.IIEyes I dare not meet in dreamsIn death's dream kingdom These do not appear:There the eyes areSunlight on a broken columnThere is a tree swingingAnd voices are In the wind's singingMore distant and more solemnThan a fading starLet me be no nearerIn death's dream kingdom Let me also wearSuch deliberate disguisesRat's coat, crowskin, crossed stavesIn a fieldBehaving as the wind behaves No nearer--Not that final meetingIn the twilight kingdom.IIIThis is the dead landthis is cactus land Here the stone imagesAre raised, here they receiveThe supplication of a dead man's handUnder the twinkle of a fading star.Is it like this In death's other kingdomWaking aloneAt the hour when we areTrembling with tendernessLips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stoneIVThe eyes are not hereThere are no eye hereIn this valley of dying starsIn this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.In this last of meeting placesWe grope togetherAnd avoid speechGathered on this beach of the tumid river. Sightless, unlessThe eyes reappearAs the perpetual starMultifoliate roseOf death's twilight kingdom The hope onlyOf empty men.VHere we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the act Falls the ShadowFor Thine is the KingdomBetween the conceptionAnd the creationBetween the emotion And the responseFalls the ShadowLife is very longBetween the desireAnd the spasm Between the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow For Thine is the KingdomFor Thine isLife isFor thine is theThis is the way the way the world ends This is the way the way the world endsThis is the way the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman "This living hand, now warm and capable"By John KeatsThis living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou would wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–I hold it towards you.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Haunted PalaceBy Edgar Allan Poe In the greenest of our valleysBy good angels tenanted,Once a fair and stately palace -Radiant palace - reared its head.In the monarch Thought's dominion -It stood there!Never seraph spread a pinionOver fabric half so fair!  Banners yellow, glorious, golden,On its roof did float and flow,(This - all this - was in the oldenTime long ago,)And every gentle air that dallied,In that sweet day,Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,A winged odor went away.  Wanderers in that happy valley,Through two luminous windows, sawSpirits moving musically,To a lute's well-tuned law,Round about a throne where, sitting(Porphyrogene!)In state his glory well-befitting,The ruler of the realm was seen.  And all with pearl and ruby glowingWas the fair palace door,Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,And sparkling evermore,A troop of Echoes, whose sweet dutyWas but to sing,In voices of surpassing beauty,The wit and wisdom of their king.  But evil things, in robes of sorrow,Assailed the monarch's high estate.(Ah, let us mourn! - for never morrowShall dawn upon him desolate!)And round about his home the gloryThat blushed and bloomed,Is but a dim-remembered storyOf the old time entombed.  And travellers, now, within that valley,Through the red-litten windows seeVast forms, that move fantasticallyTo a discordant melody,While, like a ghastly rapid river,Through the pale doorA hideous throng rush out foreverAnd laugh - but smile no more.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanThe ListenersBy Walter De La Mere‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grassesOf the forest’s ferny floor:And a bird flew up out of the turret,Above the Traveller’s head:And he smote upon the door again a second time;‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.But no one descended to the Traveller;No head from the leaf-fringed sillLeaned over and looked into his grey eyes,Where he stood perplexed and still.But only a host of phantom listenersThat dwelt in the lone house thenStood listening in the quiet of the moonlightTo that voice from the world of men:Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,That goes down to the empty hall,Hearkening in an air stirred and shakenBy the lonely Traveller’s call.And he felt in his heart their strangeness,Their stillness answering his cry,While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,’Neath the starred and leafy sky;For he suddenly smote on the door, evenLouder, and lifted his head:—‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word,’ he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the one man left awake:Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward,When the plunging hoofs were gone.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman OctoberBY ROBERT FROSTO hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes’ sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost— For the grapes’ sake along the wall.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin SeamanThe Man-Moth” (written 1935, published 1936)_Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.But when the Man-Mothpays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,the moon looks rather different to him. He emergesfrom an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalksand nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,proving the sky quite useless for protection.He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.Up the façades,his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind himhe climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manageto push his small head through that round clean openingand be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, althoughhe fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.Then he returnsto the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trainsfast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong wayand the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.Each night he mustbe carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underliehis rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,runs there beside him. He regards it as a diseasehe has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keephis hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.If you catch him,hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightensas he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lidsone tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attentionhe’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman   The Auroras of Autumn Canto 5-10VThe mother invites humanity to her houseAnd table. The father fetches tellers of talesAnd musicians who mute much, muse much, on the tales.The father fetches negresses to dance,Among the children, like curious ripenessesOf pattern in the dance's ripening.For these the musicians make insidious tones,Clawing the sing-song of their instruments.The children laugh and jangle a tinny time.The father fetches pageants out of air,Scenes of the theatre, vistas and blocks of woodsAnd curtains like a naive pretence of sleep.Among these the musicians strike the instinctive poem.The father fetches his unherded herds,Of barbarous tongue, slavered and panting halvesOf breath, obedient to his trumpet's touch.This then is Chatillon or as you please.We stand in the tumult of a festival.What festival? This loud, disordered mooch?These hospitaliers? These brute-like guests?These musicians dubbing at a tragedy,A-dub, a-dub, which is made up of this:That there are no lines to speak? There is no play.Or, the persons act one merely by being here.VIIt is a theatre floating through the clouds,Itself a cloud, although of misted rockAnd mountains running like water, wave on wave,Through waves of light. It is of cloud transformedTo cloud transformed again, idly, the wayA season changes color to no end,Except the lavishing of itself in change,As light changes yellow into gold and goldTo its opal elements and fire's delight,Splashed wide-wise because it likes magnificenceAnd the solemn pleasures of magnificent spaceThe cloud drifts idly through half-thought-of forms.The theatre is filled with flying birds,Wild wedges, as of a volcano's smoke, palm-eyedAnd vanishing, a web in a corridorOr massive portico. A capitol,It may be, is emerging or has justCollapsed. The denouement has to be postponed . . .This is nothing until in a single man contained,Nothing until this named thing nameless isAnd is destroyed. He opens the door of his houseOn flames. The scholar of one candle seesAn Arctic effulgence flaring on the frameOf everything he is. And he feels afraid.VIIIs there an imagination that sits enthronedAs grim as it is benevolent, the justAnd the unjust, which in the midst of summer stopsTo imagine winter? When the leaves are dead,Does it take its place in the north and enfold itself,Goat-leaper, crystalled and luminous, sittingIn highest night? And do these heavens adornAnd proclaim it, the white creator of black, jettedBy extinguishings, even of planets as may be,Even of earth, even of sight, in snow,Except as needed by way of majesty,In the sky, as crown and diamond cabala?It leaps through us, through all our heavens leaps,Extinguishing our planets, one by one,Leaving, of where we were and looked, of whereWe knew each other and of each other thought,A shivering residue, chilled and foregone,Except for that crown and mystical cabala.But it dare not leap by chance in its own dark.It must change from destiny to slight caprice.And thus its jetted tragedy, its steleAnd shape and mournful making move to findWhat must unmake it and, at last, what can,Say, a flippant communication under the moon.VIIIThere may be always a time of innocence.There is never a place. Or if there is no time,If it is not a thing of time, nor of place,Existing in the idea of it, alone,In the sense against calamity, it is notLess real. For the oldest and coldest philosopher,There is or may be a time of innocenceAs pure principle. Its nature is its end,That it should be, and yet not be, a thingThat pinches the pity of the pitiful man,Like a book at evening beautiful but untrue,Like a book on rising beautiful and true.It is like a thing of ether that existsAlmost as predicate. But it exists,It exists, it is visible, it is, it is.So, then, these lights are not a spell of light,A saying out of a cloud, but innocence.An innocence of the earth and no false signOr symbol of malice. That we partake thereof,Lie down like children in this holiness,As if, awake, we lay in the quiet of sleep,As if the innocent mother sang in the darkOf the room and on an accordion, half-heard,Created the time and place in which we breathed . . .IXAnd of each other thought—in the idiomOf the work, in the idiom of an innocent earth,Not of the enigma of the guilty dream.We were as Danes in Denmark all day longAnd knew each other well, hale-hearted landsmen,For whom the outlandish was another dayOf the week, queerer than Sunday. We thought alikeAnd that made brothers of us in a homeIn which we fed on being brothers, fedAnd fattened as on a decorous honeycomb.This drama that we live—We lay sticky with sleep.This sense of the activity of fate—The rendezvous, when she came alone,By her coming became a freedom of the two,An isolation which only the two could share.Shall we be found hanging in the trees next s pring?Of what disaster in this the imminence:Bare limbs, bare trees and a wind as sharp as salt?The stars are putting on their glittering belts.They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flashLike a great shadow's last embellishment.It may come tomorrow in the simplest word,Almost as part of innocence, almost,Almost as the tenderest and the truest part.XAn unhappy people in a happy world—Read, rabbi, the phases of this difference.An unhappy people in an unhappy world—Here are too many mirrors for misery.A happy people in an unhappy world—It cannot be. There's nothing there to rollOn the expressive tongue, the finding fang.A happy people in a happy world—Buffo! A ball, an opera, a bar.Turn back to where we were when we began:An unhappy people in a happy world.Now, solemnize the secretive syllables.Read to the congregation, for todayAnd for tomorrow, this extremity,This contrivance of the spectre of the spheres,Contriving balance to contrive a whole,The vital, the never-failing genius,Fulfilling his meditations, great and small.In these unhappy he meditates a whole,The full of fortune and the full of fate,As if he lived all lives, that he might know,In hall harridan, not hushful paradise,To a haggling of wind and weather, by these lightsLike a blaze of summer straw, in winter's nick.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman   The Auroras of Autumnby Wallace StevensIThis is where the serpent lives, the bodiless.His head is air. Beneath his tip at nightEyes open and fix on us in every sky.Or is this another wriggling out of the egg,Another image at the end of the cave,Another bodiless for the body's slough?This is where the serpent lives. This is his nest,These fields, these hills, these tinted distances,And the pines above and along and beside the sea.This is form gulping after formlessness,Skin flashing to wished-for disappearancesAnd the serpent body flashing without the skin.This is the height emerging and its baseThese lights may finally attain a poleIn the midmost midnight and find the serpent there,In another nest, the master of the mazeOf body and air and forms and images,Relentlessly in possession of happiness.This is his poison: that we should disbelieveEven that. His meditations in the ferns,When he moved so slightly to make sure of sun,Made us no less as sure. We saw in his head,Black beaded on the rock, the flecked animal,The moving grass, the Indian in his glade.IIFarewell to an idea . . . A cabin stands,Deserted, on a beach. It is white,As by a custom or according toAn ancestral theme or as a consequenceOf an infinite course. The flowers against the wallAre white, a little dried, a kind of markReminding, trying to remind, of a whiteThat was different, something else, last yearOr before, not the white of an aging afternoon,Whether fresher or duller, whether of winter cloudOr of winter sky, from horizon to horizon.The wind is blowing the sand across the floor.Here, being visible is being white,Is being of the solid of white, the accomplishmentOf an extremist in an exercise . . .The season changes. A cold wind chills the beach.The long lines of it grow longer, emptier,A darkness gathers though it does not fallAnd the whiteness grows less vivid on the wall.The man who is walking turns blankly on the sand.He observes how the north is always enlarging the change,With its frigid brilliances, its blue-red sweepsAnd gusts of great enkindlings, its polar green,The color of ice and fire and solitude.IIIFarewell to an idea . . . The mother's face,The purpose of the poem, fills the room.They are together, here, and it is warm,With none of the prescience of oncoming dreams.It is evening. The house is evening, half dissolved.Only the half they can never possess remains,Still-starred. It is the mother they possess,Who gives transparence to their present peace.She makes that gentler that can gentle be.And yet she too is dissolved, she is destroyed.She gives transparence. But she has grown old.The necklace is a carving not a kiss.The soft hands are a motion not a touch.The house will crumble and the books will burn.They are at ease in a shelter of the mindAnd the house is of the mind and they and time,Together, all together. Boreal nightWill look like frost as it approaches themAnd to the mother as she falls asleepAnd as they say good-night, good-night. UpstairsThe windows will be lighted, not the rooms.A wind will spread its windy grandeurs roundAnd knock like a rifle-butt against the door.The wind will command them with invincible sound.IVFarewell to an idea . . . The cancellings,The negations are never final. The father sitsIn space, wherever he sits, of bleak regard,As one that is strong in the bushes of his eyes.He says no to no and yes to yes. He says yesTo no; and in saying yes he says farewell.He measures the velocities of change.He leaps from heaven to heaven more rapidlyThan bad angels leap from heaven to hell in flam es.But now he sits in quiet and green-a-day.He assumes the great speeds of space and flutters themFrom cloud to cloudless, cloudless to keen clearIn flights of eye and ear, the highest eyeAnd the lowest ear, the deep ear that discerns,At evening, things that attend it until it hearsThe supernatural preludes of its own,At the moment when the angelic eye definesIts actors approaching, in company, in their masks.Master O master seated by the fireAnd yet in space and motionless and yetOf motion the ever-brightening origin,Profound, and yet the king and yet the crown,Look at this present throne. What company,In masks, can choir it with the naked wind?  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production And Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Nathan Hoks is the author of two books of poetry, Reveilles and The Narrow Circle, which was a winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series and published by Penguin. His translations, poems, and critical writings have appeared in journals such as The Colorado Review, jubilat, Crazyhorse, Lit, Circumference, Octopus Magazine, and Verse. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Hoks works as an editor and letterpress printer for Convulsive Editions, a micro-press that publishes chapbooks and broadsides.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman Poems included: Robinson, Robinson at Home, Relating to Robinson  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman