WEBVTT

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- I read a couple of poems from
The Double Dream of Spring,

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which was a book following
Rivers and Mountains, published

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in 1970.

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And for the students to whom
I was talking this afternoon,

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this was sort of what I
feel is my one size fits

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all confessional poem.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's called Soonest Mended,
as in the phrase, least said,

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soonest mended.

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Barely tolerated,
living on the margin

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in our technological
society, we were always

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having to be rescued on
the brink of destruction,

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like heroines in Orlando
Furioso before it was

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time to start all over again.

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There would be thunder in the
bushes, a rustling of coils,

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and Angelica, in
the Ingres painting,

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was considering the colorful
but small monster near her toe,

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as though wondering whether
forgetting the whole thing

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might not, in the end,
be the only solution.

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And then there
always came a time

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when Happy Hooligan in his
rusted green automobile

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came plowing down
the course, just

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to make sure everything was
OK, only by that time we were

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in another chapter
and confused about how

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to receive this latest
piece of information.

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Was it information?

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Weren't we rather acting this
out for someone else's benefit,

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thoughts in a mind
with room enough

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and to spare for
our little problems,

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so they began to seem, our
daily quandary about food

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and the rent and
bills to be paid?

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To reduce all this to a small
variant, to step free at last,

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minuscule on the
gigantic plateau--

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this was our ambition, to
be small and clear and free.

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Alas the summer's
energy wanes quickly,

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a moment and it is gone.

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And no longer may we make
the necessary arrangements,

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simple as they are.

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Our star was brighter perhaps
when it had water in it.

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Now there is no question
even of that, but only

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of holding on to the
hard earth so as not

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to get thrown off with an
occasional dream, a vision.

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A robin flies across the
upper corner of the window,

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you brush your hair away
and cannot quite see,

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or a wound will flash against
the sweet faces of the others,

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something like, this is
what you wanted to hear,

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so why did you think of
listening to something else?

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We are all talkers it is
true, but underneath the talk

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lies the moving and not wanting
to be moved, the loose meaning,

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untidy and simple like
a threshing floor.

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These then were some
hazards of the course,

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yet though we knew the course
was hazards and nothing else

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it was still a shock
when, almost a quarter

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of a century later, the
clarity of the rules

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dawned on you for
the first time.

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They were the
players, and we would

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struggle that the game were
merely spectators, though

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subject to its
vicissitudes and moving

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with it out of the cheerful
stadium, born on shoulders,

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at last.

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Night after night
this message returns,

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repeated in the flickering
bulbs of the sky,

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raised past us, taken away
from us, yet ours over and over

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until the end that is
past truth, the being

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of our sentences in the
climate that fostered them,

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not ours to own, like
a book, but to be with,

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and sometimes to be without,
alone and desperate.

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But the fantasy makes
it ours, a kind of fence

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sitting raised through the
level of an aesthetic ideal.

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These were moments,
years, solid with reality,

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faces, nameable events,
kisses, heroic acts,

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but like the friendly beginning
of a geometrical progression

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not too reassuring,
as though meaning

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could be cast aside someday
when it had been outgrown.

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Better, you said,
to stay cowering

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like this in the early lessons,
since the promise of learning

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is a delusion, and I agreed,
adding that tomorrow would

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alter the sense of what
had already been learned,

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that the learning process
is extended in this way,

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so that from this
standpoint none of us

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ever graduates from college,
for time is an emulsion,

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and probably thinking
not to grow up

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is the brightest kind
of maturity for us,

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right now at any rate.

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And you see, both
of us were right,

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though nothing has
somehow come to nothing;

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the avatars of our
conforming to the rules

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and living around the
home have made-- well,

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in a sense, good citizens of
us, brushing the teeth and all

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that, and learning to accept
the charity of the hard moments

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as they are doled out.

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For this is action,
this not being sure,

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this careless preparing,
sowing the seeds

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crooked in the furrow,
making ready to forget,

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and always coming back to
the morning of starting out,

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that day so long ago.

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