WEBVTT

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It gives me enormous pleasure
to introduce to you the man who

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is in my estimation the greatest
living American poet, Mr. WS

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Merwin.

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[APPLAUSE]

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I don't know how to do anything
after an introduction like that

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except say thank you.

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I'm going to read from the last
two published books of poems,

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and then from poems
that have not yet

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been published in a book.

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And the order in which
I read is roughly not

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pathetically chronological.

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And I know you're supposed
to break things up

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with a certain amount
of relaxing nonsense,

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and I'll try to do a
little bit of that.

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But mostly I'll just fall into
bashful silence between poems

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and let you catch your
breath while I catch mine,

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rather than do a lot of
linking, which may or may not

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be relevant, except that it
seems to me really essential.

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But I'm going to start
with two poems that

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are obviously
related to each other

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and are quite unlike each other.

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They're both poems
which are about animals

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and then either of them about
zoological I mean, ostensibly

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and immediately
zoological animals.

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They're about animals
which are part

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of one's own existence
of one's own mythology,

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so what have been referred
to as totem animals.

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The first of them is an
obviously mythological one

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it's not immediately or
apparently a private one.

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It's called-- it's
a poem about a bird

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and it's called "Noah's Raven."

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And I should say in
explaining that we remember

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immediately if you
talk about Noah's bird

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we remember the dog
which came back,

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and then the dove which
did not come back--

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the dove which came back
first bearing the olive branch

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and on the other one.

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But we forget about the raven
which never came back at all,

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and this is the bird
that didn't come back,

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and it's the bird
itself speaking.

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Why should I have returned?

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My knowledge would
not fit into theirs.

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I found untouched the desert
of the unknown big enough

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for my feet, it is my home.

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It is always beyond them.

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The future splits the present
with the echo of my voice.

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Hoarse with fulfillment
I never made promises.

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