WEBVTT

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And I'll read the title poem
from that collection called

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"Weighing Light," about
which there was apparently

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much discussion.

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There's a kind of
slipperiness to the poem.

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And it's particularly
slippery when

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you're just hearing
it one time out loud

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and you can't reread it.

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But just to give you
a little assistance,

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there's four characters
in this poem.

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It's a little short
story, or a little scene,

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and there's four characters.

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And they're referred to with
different pronouns, just

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he, she, you, I. And
so I guess that's all.

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That's the only thing I
can say that might help.

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"Weighing Light."

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Often the slightest gesture
is most telling, as when

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he reaches tenderly and passing,
to pluck the yellow leaf

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from the dark fall

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Of her hair, or even the
absence of all gesture:

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the way she doesn't
need to turn to know

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who, in this gathering of
friends, has touched her.

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It was as if he dreamed
some private garden.

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Perhaps he woke
from it, mid-reach,

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to find his hand too near her
hair in this crowded yard,

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And maybe even now
she's shuddering in--

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she's even better than
you or I at that--

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a storm of worry
and recrimination--

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Did anyone notice? how
could he do that here!--

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By seamlessly continuing
to tell you about her trip

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to see her favorite Vermeer

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This morning in the
Delft show at the Met:

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"So now they say
she isn't wearing

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pearls or gold or anything--
it's just the light

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Gleaming off empty scales."

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so much is hard
to know for sure.

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If I confronted her, she'd
say it was just a leaf--

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who could afford

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To disagree?

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Could we?

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Now she's explaining
how the girl faces

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a mirror we can't see
into and how behind her

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hangs a gloomy painting

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Of the Last Judgment: "Over her
head God floats in a cloud,"

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she says, "like a
thought balloon."

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But you don't hear.

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You're watching me.

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I nod.

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