WEBVTT

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I want to go on from that
book to the next one.

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Book called The Lice.

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And the title lest you
waste time wondering

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how one arrived at
a title like that,

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got a Greek scholar to help
me fiddle with I got it

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the way I wanted it.

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And he said it was close
enough to Heraclides.

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And this way it
reads, all men are

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deceived by the
appearances of things,

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even Homer himself who was
the wisest man in Greece.

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But he was deceived
by boys catching lice.

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They said to him
what we have caught

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and what we have killed
we have left behind.

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But what is escaped
us we bring with us.

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It seems to work
for all poems but it

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worked for this book, which
is a kind of descent book--

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E S C-- particularly.

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And before I get
into the poems which

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are more typical
of the book, I want

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to read one which is typical
of the theme of the book

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but not of the kind of
poems that are in it

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and not of anything that
I'd ever written before

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or have written since.

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It's a poem that again, if one's
talking about the ironies that

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go into things one of the
private ironies about it

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was the fact that it takes-- it
was suggested, the form of it

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was suggested by a Brazilian
Indian creation myth.

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And the poem itself is
nothing at all like a creation

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myth except that it--

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I mean in subject.

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Formally, it's a kind
of mock narrative

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but at the same
time incantatory.

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And so the disparity
between what it's doing

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and how it does it is ironic.

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And you can tell from the
title that it's a poem about

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an anti--

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it's not an anti creation myth.

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It's a poem-- it's
a mythological poem

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about an anti creation,
which is a different thing.

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And called "The Last One."

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Well they made up their minds to
be everywhere because why not.

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Everywhere was theirs
because they thought so.

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They was two leaves, they
whom the birds despise.

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In the middle of stones
they made up their minds.

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They started to cut.

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Well, they cut everything
because why not.

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Everything was theirs
because they thought so.

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It fell into its shadows
and they took both away.

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Some to have, some for burning.

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Well, cutting everything
they came to the water.

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They came to the end of the day,
there was one left standing.

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They would cut it
tomorrow, they went away.

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The night gathered
in the last branches.

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The shadow of the night gathered
in the shadow on the water.

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The night and the shadow
put on the same head.

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And it said, now.

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Well in the morning
they cut the last one.

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Like the others the last
one felt into its shadow.

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It fell into its
shadow on the water.

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They took it away.

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Its shadow stayed on the water.

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Well, they shrugged.

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They started trying to
get the shadow away.

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They cut right to the ground,
the shadow stayed whole.

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They laid boards on it.

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The shadow came out on top.

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They shone lights on it, the
shadow got blacker and clearer.

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They exploded the water
the shadow rocked.

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They built a huge
fire on the roots.

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They set up black smoke
between the shadow and the sun.

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The new shadow flowed
without changing the old one.

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They shrugged, they
went away to get stones.

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They came back the
shadow was growing.

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They started setting up
stones it was growing.

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They looked the other
way it went on growing.

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They decided they would
make a stone out of it.

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They took stones to the
water they poured them

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into the shadow.

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They poured them in, they poured
them in, the stones vanished.

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The shadow was not filled,
it went on growing.

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That was one day.

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The next day was just the same.

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It went on growing.

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They did all the same
things it was just the same.

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They decided to take
its water from under it.

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They took away water, they took
it away, the water went down.

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The shadow stayed
where it was before.

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It went on growing.

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It grew on to the land.

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They started to scrape
the shadow with machines.

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When it touched the
machines it stayed on them.

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They started to beat
the shadow with sticks.

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Where it touched the
sticks it stayed on them.

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They started to beat
the shadow with hands.

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Where it touched the
hands it stayed on them.

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That was another day.

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Well, the next day it
started about the same.

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It went on growing.

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They pushed lights
into the shadow.

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Where the shadow got
onto them they went out.

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They began to stomp on the
edge it got their feet.

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And when it got their
feet they fell down.

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It got into eyes,
the eyes went blind.

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The ones that fell down it
grew over and they vanished.

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The ones that went blind
and walked into it vanished.

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The ones that could
see and stood still it

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swallowed their shadows.

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Then it swallowed them
too and they vanished.

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Well, the others ran.

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The ones that were
left went away

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to live if it would let them.

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They went as far as they
could the lucky ones

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with their shadows.

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To make a--

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[APPLAUSE]

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