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And the last one I'll read--

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Whether the execution
was summary or not,

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the walls an alluring
extra in the background.

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In the foreground, the image
is not a stethoscope any more

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than I am a hero
or a movie actor.

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The image does not say whether
my heartbeat speeds up.

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At this very instant,
I'm grinning wide.

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I'm strong, the worst
son of a bitch alive.

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I'll shoot myself, smoke
my last cigar, after which,

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I'll rise and grin at you again.

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He's dead.

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He gets up, resuscitated, if
you like, or fully imagined,

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passing into the silence of this
image with no beating heart,

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without clarifying who is
speaking, except that someone

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is speaking.

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Someone announces
the exact moment

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that he falls and gets up, like
a line, anew, falling, cutting,

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reversing.

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The execution, everything
is there, set into play,

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brought to term.

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That is why the verse opens
with such a cadence decasyllable

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and internal rhyme
in the hemistitch.

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Whether the execution
was summary or not,

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there is in the line an
execution that is always

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in some sense summary,
of the course of meaning,

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of discourse that does
not relate to the moment.

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The break in that
course, in contrast,

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must take place only
at the precise moment,

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meaning shoots itself.

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What a cold phrase,
sputtering without appeal.

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And the rising
smoke from the cigar

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here mixes with the
smoke from the guns.

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A poem is always,
at each moment,

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a last word with no conclusion.

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That's my conclusion.

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Thank you so much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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