WEBVTT

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I will share with
you now some poems.

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This is a galley, and it will
be published on March 10.

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I'm very sorry it's
not here tonight.

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It's not published yet.

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They don't have any copies.

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I asked them if,
just for Arizona,

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they could send a few boxes.

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And they said we don't
have them yet, so--

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This is called, In the
Lateness of The World,

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and I want to share
a few poems from it.

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I've spent about seven years,
seven of the past summers,

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in Greece, on an island
in the northern Aegean.

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It's very near Lesbos,
where the refugee camps are.

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The people who are fleeing
our wars and people

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coming from North Africa
through the Aegean,

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trying to reach Europe,
often die in the Aegean.

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And the Greeks would go out
on their little fishing boats

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and try to save as many
people as they could,

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and bring them on to the
beaches and take them

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into their houses.

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This became illegal.

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They outlawed helping refugees.

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The Greeks didn't care.

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The Greeks don't care
about laws like that,

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so they kept doing it.

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And I later met one
of the refugees.

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He's from the city
of Homs in Syria.

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This is his testimony,
brought into a poem.

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"The Boatman."

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We were 31 souls, he said.

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In the gray sick of sea, in
a cold rubber boat, rising

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and falling in our filth.

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By morning, this didn't matter.

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No land was in sight.

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All were soaked to the
bone, living and dead.

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We could still float, we
said, from war to war.

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What lay behind us, but ruins of
stone, piled on ruins of stone?

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City called "mother
of the poor,"

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surrounded by fields of cotton
and millet, city of jewelers

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and cloak makers, with the
oldest church in Christendom

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and the Sword of Allah.

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If anyone remains
there now, he assures,

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they would be utterly alone.

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There is a hotel
named for it in Rome,

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200 meters from the
Piazza di Spagna,

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where you can have breakfast
under the portraits of film

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stars.

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There, the staff cannot
do enough for you.

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But I am talking nonsense again,
as I have since that night we

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fetched a child, not
ours, from the sea,

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drifting face-down in a
life vest, its eyes taken

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by fish or the birds above us.

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After that, Aleppo
went up in smoke,

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and Raqqa came under
a reign of leaflets

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warning everyone to go.

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Leave, yes, but go where?

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We lived through the
Americans and Russians,

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through Americans
again, many nights

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of death from the clouds.

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Mornings surprised to be waking
from the sleep of death, still

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unburied and alive,
with no safe place.

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Leave, yes.

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We'll obey the
leaflets, but go where?

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To the sea, to be eaten?

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To the shores of
Europe, to be caged?

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To camp misery, and
camp remain here?

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I ask you then, where?

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You tell me you are a poet.

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If so, our destination
is the same.

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I find myself now, the
boatman, driving a taxi

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at the end of the world.

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I will see that you
arrive safely, my friend.

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I will get you there.

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