WEBVTT

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This poem is, in many ways,
an elegy for a student of ours

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at VCU, where I teach.

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Thank you, Tony, for that
wonderful introduction.

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Title of it is "For the
Honorable Wayne LaPierre,

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President, National
Rifle Association."

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"Someone filed off the
serial number of the Glock.

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Someone bought it and sold it,
and someone else sold it again.

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And thus, Howard
Reed Scott III, 17,

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shot Tyler Binsted, 19,
by the tennis courts

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at Byrd Park, 1:00 AM on a rainy
Thursday, a robbery gone afoul.

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You were asleep in
Beltway, Maryland then,

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a gated community,
security alarm enabled,

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your own handgun loaded
in a bedside table drawer.

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Deeply, you slept,
having all day

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submitted to
reporters' questions

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after the high court
overturned the DC handgun ban.

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The Second Amendment
once again preserved,

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a victory not just
for the NRA, but for

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all freedom-loving Americans.

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Deeply, you slept as
Tyler Binsted bled out

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against the tennis court fence,
as Howard Reed Scott hurled

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the Glock to the
freeway roadside

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from the window of
his girlfriend's car.

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You had read until
you drifted off,

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your wife beside you slumbering.

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I do not know what book you
closed, but assume it was not

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Dante, who places the violent
in Hell's Seventh Circle, Second

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Ring.

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Dante also was a politician,
though an unsuccessful one,

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dying poor and in exile.

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I will not bore you with the
partisan quarrels of Dante's

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Florence, of Guelph
against Ghilbelline,

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of house arrest and banishment.

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But I can tell you, Circle
Seven is a river of blood

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where Dante situates
Alexander, Atilla,

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and various tyrants, those
whose violence to others

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brings down cities and nations.

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The river, furthermore,
is boiling,

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darkly crimson in
the stygian reaches,

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lit from afar by plains of fire.

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The damned cannot rise
above the singeing waters.

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Pushed down into the bloody
depths by the centaurs who

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guard them, they cannot speak
to bewail their condition.

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I do not know you, sir.

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Tyler Binsted and
Howard Reed Scott

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are surely unknown names to you.

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And if they were known,
would quickly be forgotten.

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I cannot read Italian, and
my art is limited and clumsy.

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But Dante, I am
convinced, would place you

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in the depths of Phlegethon,
his boiling crimson river.

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He would make your
pain unbearable.

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Forever the seething blood would
scorch and fill your lungs.

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Dante Alighieri
was a man of peace,

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though famously self-righteous,
aggressive, flawed.

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Yet many and eloquent were
his statements on freedom.

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He believed some sins
could be forgiven.

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Regarding others,
he was pitiless."

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[APPLAUSE]

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