WEBVTT

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I'm going to end with one
other fairly serious, sort

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of ritualistic poem like that.

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I'm currently
attracted to the idea

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of getting turns in
poetry which will relate

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to the sort of invocatory
or celebratory turns

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which do occur in a public
ritual like a religious ritual,

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without necessarily using
directly religious subject

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matter.

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And this last poem isn't
fair to translation

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from the Hungarian of a
very fine poet, I think,

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Laszlo Nagy.

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I should say that I
don't know Hungarian,

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and it's worked up from
literal versions that

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have been prepared for me.

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Nagy is a poet who has
something in common, I think,

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with Dylan Thomas and
with Robert Lowell.

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He translated Dylan Thomas into
Hungarian, and has, I think,

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been very affected by
the surreal elements

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in Thomas's style.

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At the same time, some
of his subject matter

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is a series of very bad
breakdowns, which he had.

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He was in and out of hospital.

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And he felt that
he'd been pulled

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through these by the continuing
attention of his wife.

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And in this poem,
he addresses her

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as a kind of goddess of healing.

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The poem's called "Prayer
to the White Lady."

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"Creature of flame, out of
the sun's bow, I call you.

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Moment of crystal for
the throwing knife,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Oh, lady of the
small locks, keeper

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of the instruments in the
zenith, last room of the king,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Palm and the reign of
sorrow, fire underglaze

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lifting the twin domes
of your body above me,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Mistress of victory, flame
of the gathering storm,

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brightening into the jails of
my eyes, lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Nurse of the war wounded,
yours is the house

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of the Jew and the Negro.

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The loft of the bees
kiss mysterious honey.

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Lighten my darkness,
I need you now.

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Lady, oblivious of blood and
money, belly dancer of hunger,

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echo in the resonance
of the millennium,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Oh, my dear one, tempered
by the beam of the laser,

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torn by the stone body of
the Gorgon, the man child,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Always your tall
house was open to me,

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glittering with expectation.

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Oh, god-like above the bronze
cauldron of your beauty,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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In the beginning, I
felt your body lap me,

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drowning into the
sarabande of love.

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Killer of the black crows that
haunt me, lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Now, on the brink of
the vacuum at the edge

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with a million
tendrils of nothingness

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that are erupting even out of my
own mind, lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Already of pain, shell
of this affliction,

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sufferer under the
same electric coil,

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now as I reach for the
pill and the needle,

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lighten my darkness.

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I need you now.

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Only in you will the house
of my body glisten gold

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in all its chimneys and veins.

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Only in you will the
white pigeons flicker.

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Lighten my darkness.

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I need you now."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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