WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.560 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.560 --> 00:00:05.430 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Forefathers' Paradise." 00:00:05.430 --> 00:00:08.070 align:middle line:84% "I don't know shit about forefathers' sins 00:00:08.070 --> 00:00:12.240 align:middle line:84% and other Western inventions, but, really, there 00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:16.680 align:middle line:84% away in the dew of the first days before our mother's hut, 00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:19.230 align:middle line:90% how beautiful it was. 00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:22.380 align:middle line:84% The Angels' whites as I recall them, closed in the front 00:00:22.380 --> 00:00:26.070 align:middle line:84% but were left unbuttoned just like the overalls of girls 00:00:26.070 --> 00:00:27.810 align:middle line:90% working in salons. 00:00:27.810 --> 00:00:29.190 align:middle line:90% Fabulous. 00:00:29.190 --> 00:00:33.210 align:middle line:84% And all the geraniums, on a long, whitewashed flagstone 00:00:33.210 --> 00:00:34.230 align:middle line:90% turned to the wind. 00:00:34.230 --> 00:00:36.480 align:middle line:84% You could see them milling, ceaselessly, 00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:39.420 align:middle line:90% the black bread of the sun. 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:42.330 align:middle line:84% Fresh days in umbra and in sienna, 00:00:42.330 --> 00:00:45.180 align:middle line:84% when the island seemed a boundless Lassithi, 00:00:45.180 --> 00:00:50.604 align:middle line:84% weightless and just cast on a dazzling, shattered sea. 00:00:50.604 --> 00:00:54.600 align:middle line:84% One leg over the other on the beach ridged by the wind, 00:00:54.600 --> 00:00:57.930 align:middle line:84% all gold sparks from spurs galloping, I watched. 00:00:57.930 --> 00:01:01.380 align:middle line:84% I remember siroko girls with cool thighs 00:01:01.380 --> 00:01:04.470 align:middle line:90% unwinding a hair like clover. 00:01:04.470 --> 00:01:08.770 align:middle line:84% And my heart, against the naked mountains across dook-dook 00:01:08.770 --> 00:01:12.270 align:middle line:84% counter-echoed like a motor schooner. 00:01:12.270 --> 00:01:15.000 align:middle line:84% It was the time of leaf and shiny, 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 align:middle line:90% when Seth and Merione ruled. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.580 align:middle line:90% Nights, I had meaning. 00:01:20.580 --> 00:01:22.860 align:middle line:90% I gave it to the nightingales. 00:01:22.860 --> 00:01:25.140 align:middle line:84% And sleep was sweet, full of half-moons, 00:01:25.140 --> 00:01:28.980 align:middle line:84% brooks in C-major for viola d'amore. 00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:32.160 align:middle line:84% There were daisies you ate and others that lit up 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:34.290 align:middle line:90% in the dark like fireworks. 00:01:34.290 --> 00:01:38.250 align:middle line:84% The vast grass groaned and made the love under your feet 00:01:38.250 --> 00:01:42.540 align:middle line:84% past stars like flocks of fish, and the cove, deep blue, 00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:44.490 align:middle line:90% advanced in your entrails. 00:01:44.490 --> 00:01:47.210 align:middle line:90% How good it was. 00:01:47.210 --> 00:01:49.350 align:middle line:90% Angels teased me. 00:01:49.350 --> 00:01:53.470 align:middle line:84% Often, gathered around me, they'd ask, what's pain? 00:01:53.470 --> 00:01:55.020 align:middle line:90% And what's illness? 00:01:55.020 --> 00:01:56.970 align:middle line:90% And I didn't know at all. 00:01:56.970 --> 00:01:58.260 align:middle line:90% I didn't know. 00:01:58.260 --> 00:01:59.880 align:middle line:84% I hadn't even heard about the tree 00:01:59.880 --> 00:02:02.670 align:middle line:84% from where death entered the world. 00:02:02.670 --> 00:02:05.940 align:middle line:90% So was death true? 00:02:05.940 --> 00:02:09.389 align:middle line:84% Not him, the one who comes in the newborn's cry. 00:02:09.389 --> 00:02:13.890 align:middle line:84% Was it true injustice, the nation's mania, night and day 00:02:13.890 --> 00:02:16.050 align:middle line:90% toil? 00:02:16.050 --> 00:02:20.100 align:middle line:84% Downwind of herbs, I sucked in basil and all the archangels-- 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:23.130 align:middle line:84% Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Gabudel, Achir, 00:02:23.130 --> 00:02:26.010 align:middle line:90% Ariukh, Belial, Zabuleon-- 00:02:26.010 --> 00:02:29.130 align:middle line:84% laughed, stirring their golden heads like corn, 00:02:29.130 --> 00:02:32.130 align:middle line:84% knowing the only death, the only one, 00:02:32.130 --> 00:02:35.790 align:middle line:84% is that which people made up with our minds 00:02:35.790 --> 00:02:40.410 align:middle line:84% and their great lie the tree did not exist. 00:02:40.410 --> 00:02:45.290 align:middle line:84% You fix a truth exactly like you fix a lie."