WEBVTT

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Well, there are
quite a few poems

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about a different
kind of departure

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from the ones in
The Moving Target,

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or if there are different kinds
of departure or departure seen

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in a different way.

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And some of them are projected
in different ways too as is

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or as are these next two poems.

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This again, this
next poem is again

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a poem in a second person
is addressed to some figure.

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And I think there are
quite a number of things

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I can say about it that will
make it clearer listening

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to that you'd see yourselves
at once if you were reading it

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off the page.

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The occasion of it or the
ostensible occasion of it

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was the 50th anniversary
of the Battle of Verdun,

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which was the turning point
probably of the First World

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War.

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The casualties on
both sides were

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numbered in millions, and the--

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France really never recovered
from the Battle of Verdun

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though it's one of the
only real proud things

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in modern French
military history.

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And of course, all of
the men who'd survived it

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had very strong feelings about
the 50th anniversary in the way

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that old veterans do.

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And so poem is addressed to
one of these people, who was

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a French peasant named Edouard.

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But I mean Edouard,
is deliberately

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evoked also because of the
Scottish ballad "Edward,

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Edward," which had the whole
if I may use the word again

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ironic dimension to the
way the poem happens,

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the way it moves
out of its title

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and into the
president's address too.

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And the assumption,
which is the thing

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that you notice in
these men who've

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been through this appalling
thing and come out of it

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is that they regarded
it very often

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not as the most appalling thing
that ever happened to them,

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but is in some ways the
most marvelous thing that

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ever happened to them.

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And this is one
of the mysterious

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and sometimes desperate
things about looking

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at the human animal,
which includes one cell.

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But anyway that's quite enough
to say about this poem, which

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is just called "Edouard."

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Edouard, shall we leave
tomorrow for Verdun again?

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Shall we set out
for the great days

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and never be the same, never?

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Time is what is left.

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Shall we start this
time in the spring

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and they lead your cows out
next week to sell at the fair,

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and the brambles learn to
scribble over the first field?

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Edouard, shall we have gone
when the leaves come out

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but before the heat
slows the grand marches?

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Days like those, the heights
and the dying at thy right

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hand, sound a long horn
and here the bright handles

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will fog over.

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Things will break and stay
broken in the keeping of women.

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The sheep get lost
the bonds burn

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uncontrolled in the darkness.

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Edouard, what would you
have given not to go?

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Sitting last night
in by the fire again,

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but shall we be the same?

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Tomorrow night shall we
not have gone leaving

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the faces of nightingales?

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As you know we will live,
and what never comes back

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will be you and me.

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