WEBVTT

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This one or two
things from anywhere

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is a street into the night.

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This section by the
way, is the most recent,

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one of all my most recent
poems are concentrated here

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in this section, I wrote
them in the Soviet Union.

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I was a lecturer at the
Moscow State University

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in the spring term this year.

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And I spent some four
very exciting months

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in the Soviet Union.

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I lecture just once a week
in American literature

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to a group of graduate
students and faculty,

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numbering about 125.

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All of whom could deal
easily in English.

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And the rest of the time,
I wandered about Moscow

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and got to know
the city very well,

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it's a most interesting place.

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I traveled in April
to middle Asia

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and spent two weeks in
Samarkand, Tashkent, Dushanbe.

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Certainly one of the
most interesting places

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in the world.

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This section grows out of
the Russian experience,

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anywhere is a street into
the night is the title of it.

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And the first poem
in that section

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is called crows in a
winter composition.

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My close neighbors
at Moscow were crows.

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I had a window overlooking
a little courtyard

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and in the courtyard
there were trucks,

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one red truck I fell
almost violently

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in love with that truck.

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But it was how--

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most of the time I was
there covered with snow

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and it never moved,
never moved, I never

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found out where the truck went.

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It didn't go anywhere,
but I never found out

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where it was supposed to go.

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But anyway, that's another
story and a slightly better one.

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[INTERPOSING VOICES]

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One of the things that
interested me most

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about the courtyard, which
was just off my window

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was the fact that
early in the morning,

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crows would come
spiraling down and they

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very strange creatures,
they called like crows.

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But they didn't look like
crows, not any that I had seen.

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They were-- well,
some of you have

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seen European crows, their
gray colored, black and gray,

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the distinctive markings,
and their very large.

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Crows in a winter composition.

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This morning the snow, the
soft distances beyond the trees

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in which nothing appeared,
nothing appeared.

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The several silences
imposed one upon another

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were unintelligible.

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I was there for ill at ease
when the crows came down,

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whirling down, and calling
into the yard below.

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And stood in a mindless manner
on the gray luminous crust.

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All together definite
composed in the bright enmity

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of my regard, in the
hard nature of crows.

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