WEBVTT

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I'm going to read "Souffrance".

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This is for a poet,
Daniel Simcoe,

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who was a close friend of mine.

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He was an unknown poet
who refused to publish

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his poetry when he was alive.

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He worked in the New
York Public Library,

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so he was a librarian
by profession.

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He was from former
Czechoslovakia

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from the same village
where my family was from.

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That was what brought
us together as friends.

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The Joseph in this
poem is Joseph Brodsky.

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The poem is "Souffrance",
which is suffering.

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I think of you in that sea
of graves beyond the city,

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where many stones have
been left among them mine,

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a little piece of dolomite to
weigh down a slip of paper.

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I would have put your
gloves and umbrella

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in the coffin along with
one more morning in Berlin

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with Tanya, an hour of
pigeons rising around you,

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lilacs wrapped in news stories,
a minute at the barricades,

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another riding on your
father's shoulders

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through the garlic fields
even cigarettes left over

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from the occupation I
would have placed there.

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Instead, this notebook.

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A pen full of ink and that
short poem by Holderlin

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you loved so you could
go up in smoke together.

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You, the notebook, the
pen, the poem by Holderlin.

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In the aftermath
you are emulsion

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on paper, a corpse
listening beneath the ground

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to a train passing through
a Polaroid of clouds.

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It was Joseph who said,
that for all eternity

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Venice would happen only once.

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You are a ghost then
following a ghost back

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through its only life,
or as you say now,

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there were many cities
but never a city twice.

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