WEBVTT

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The next poem I'm going
to do is slightly longer.

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It's an elegy for the Russian
poet, Osip Mandelstam.

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If you do not know
who he is, I usually

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tell people to go to the
library, which is that way.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Yeah.

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And it's one of
the best libraries

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in the world for poetry.

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So Mandelstam is under letter M.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And all you need to know
for the purpose of this poem

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was that Mandelstam was
a great Russian poet who

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happened to write a poem
against the government.

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It happened to be Joseph
Stalin's government.

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The time happened to be 19--

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1930s, which means that he was
sent into exile where he died.

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And his wife, Nadezhda, was
also sent in another exile,

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but she survived.

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That's all you need to know
for the purpose of this poem.

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The poem is sometimes
spoken in voices that

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were particular to Mandelstam.

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It's both broad and [INAUDIBLE].

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"Musica Humana."

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A modern Orpheus sent to
hell, he never returned,

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while his widow searched
across one sixth of the earth's

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surface, clutching the saucepan
with his songs rolled up

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inside, memorizing
them by night in case

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they were found by Furies
with a search warrant.

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While there is still
some light on the page,

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he escapes in a stranger's
coat with his wife.

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And the cloth smells of
sweat, a dog runs after them,

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licking the earth where
they walked and then sat.

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In a kitchen, on a
stairwell, above the toilet,

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he will show her
the way to silence.

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They will leave the
radio talking to itself.

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Making love, they
turn off the lights,

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but the neighbor has
binoculars and he watches,

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dust settling on his lids.

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It is the 1930s.

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Petersburg is a frozen ship.

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The cathedrals, cafés, down
Nevski Prospect they move,

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as the New State sticks
its pins into them.

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In Crimea, he gathered
together rich liberals

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and said to them
strictly-- on Judgment Day,

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if you're asked whether you
understood the poet Osip

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Mandelstam, say no.

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Have you fed him?

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You must answer yes.

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I am reading aloud the book of
my life on earth and confess,

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I loved grapefruit.

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In a kitchen--
sausages, testing vodka,

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the men raise their cups.

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A boy in a white shirt, I
dip my finger into sweetness.

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Mother washes behind my ears.

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And we speak of everything
that does not come true,

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which is to say--

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it was August.

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August-- the light in
the trees, full of fury.

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August filling hands
with a language

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that tastes like smoke.

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Now, memory, pour some beer,
salt the rim of the glass,

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you who are writing me,
have what you want--

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a golden coin, my
tongue to put it under.

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The younger brother
of a cloud, he

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walks unshaven in
dark-green pants.

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In cathedrals, he falls on
his knees, praying happiness.

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His words on the floor are
skeletons of dead birds.

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I have loved, yes.

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Washed my hands.

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Spoke of loyalty to the earth.

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Now death, a loverboy,
counts my fingers.

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I escape and am caught, escape
again and am caught, escape

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and am caught--

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in this song, the
singer is a clay figure,

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poetry is the self--

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I resist the self.

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Elsewhere St. Petersburg
stands like a lost youth

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whose churches,
ships, and guillotines

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accelerate our lives.

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In summer 1924, Osip Mandelstam
brought his young wife

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to St. Petersburg.

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Nadezhda was what the French
call laide mais charmante.

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An eccentric-- of course he was.

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He threw a student down the
staircase for complaining

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he wasn't published,
Osip shouting--

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Was Sappho?

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Was Jesus Christ?

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Poet is a voice, I
say, like Icarus,

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whispering to
himself as he falls.

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Yes, my life as a broken
branch in the wind

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hits the Northern ground.

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I'm writing now a
history of snow,

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the lamplight bathing the ships
that sail across the page.

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But on certain afternoons, the
Republic of Psalms opens up

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and I grow frightened that
I haven't lived, died,

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not enough to scratch this
ecstasy into vowels, hear

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splashes of clear
biblical speech.

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I read Plato, Augustine, the
loneliness of their syllables

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while Icarus keeps falling.

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And I read Akhmatova,
her rich weight

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binds me to the earth, the nut
trees on a terrace breathing

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the dry air, the daylight.

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Yes, I lived.

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The State hung me
up by the feet,

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I saw St. Petersburg's
daughters,

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swans, I learned the
grammar of gulls' array

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and found myself for
good down Pushkin Street,

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while memory sat in the corner,
erasing me with a sponge.

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I have made mistakes, yes--

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in bed I compared the
government to my girlfriend.

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Government-- an
arrogant barber's hand

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shaving off the skin.

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All of us dancing
happily around him.

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He sat on the edge of his
chair and dreamt aloud

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of good dinners.

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He composed his
poems not at his desk

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but in the streets
of St. Petersburg.

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He adored the image of the
rooster tearing apart night

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under the walls of
Acropolis with this song.

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Locked up in the cell, he
was banging on the door--

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you have got to let me out,
I wasn't made for prison.

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Once or twice in his life,
a man is peeled like apples.

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What is left is a voice
that splits his being down

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to the center.

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We see-- obscenity,
fright, mud--

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but there is joy of
shape, there is always

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more than one silence.

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Between here and
Nevski Prospect,

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the years, birdlike,
stretch-- pray

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for this man who lived
on bread and tomatoes

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while dogs recited his
poetry in each street.

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Yes, count March, July,
weave them together

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with a thread--
it is time, Lord,

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press these words
against your silence.

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The story is told of a man
who escapes and is captured

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into the prose of evenings--

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after making love, he
sits up on a kitchen

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floor, eyes wide open, speaks
of the Lord's emptiness

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in whose image we are made.

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He is out of work.

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Among silverware and dirt, he
is kissing his wife's neck so

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the skin of her belly tightens.

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One would think of a boy laying
syllables with his tongue

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onto a woman's skin--

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those are lines sewn
entirely of silence.

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Nadezhda, his wife, looks up
from the page and speaks--

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Osip, Akhmatova and I
were standing together

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when suddenly Mandelstam
melted with joy--

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several little
girls ran past us,

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imagining themselves
to be horses.

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The first one stopped,
impatiently asking--

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"Where is the last horsy?"

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I grabbed Mandelstam by his hand
to prevent him from joining,

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and Akhmatova, too,
sensing danger, whispered--

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"Do not run away from us,
you are our last horsy."

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Nadezhda continues to speak.

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As I die, I walk barefoot
across my country,

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here winter builds the
strongest solitude,

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tractors break into centaurs and
gallop through plain speech--

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I am 23, we live in a cocoon,
the butterflies are mating.

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Osip he puts his
fingers into fire,

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he gets up early, walking
around in his sandals.

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Writes slowly.

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Players fall into the room.

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Moths are watching
him from the window.

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As his tongue passes
over on my skin,

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I see his face from underneath,
his aching clarity--

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thus Nadezhda speaks,
standing in an orange light,

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her hands are quiet,
talking to themselves--

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O God of Abraham, of
Isaak and of Jacob

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on your scale of Good and
Evil, put a plate of warm food.

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Nadezhda continues to speak.

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When my husband returned
it from Voronezh,

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in his mouth he hid
a silver spoon--

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in his dreams, down
Nevski Prospect,

00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:43.800 align:middle line:84%
the dictator ran like
a wolf after his past,

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a wolf with sleep in its eyes.

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He believed in the human being.

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Couldn't cure himself
of Petersburg.

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He recited by heart phone
numbers of the dead.

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O, what he told in a low
voice-- the unspoken words

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became the traces of islands.

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When he slapped Tolstoy
in the face, it was good.

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When they took my husband, each
word disappeared into a book.

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They watched him as he spoke--
the vowels had teeth-marks.

00:10:17.970 --> 00:10:22.380 align:middle line:84%
And they said-- you must
leave him alone for already

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behind his back the stones
circle all by themselves

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and fall.

00:10:27.397 --> 00:10:32.560 align:middle line:90%


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Osip had thick eyelashes,
to the middle of his cheeks.

00:10:36.250 --> 00:10:39.100 align:middle line:84%
We were walking along
Prehistenka Street, what we are

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talking about I don't remember.

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We turned onto Gogol
Boulevard, and Osip

00:10:43.240 --> 00:10:46.180 align:middle line:90%
said, "I am ready for death."

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At his arrest,
they were searching

00:10:48.220 --> 00:10:50.980 align:middle line:90%
for poems, all over the floor.

00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:52.630 align:middle line:90%
We sat in one room.

00:10:52.630 --> 00:10:54.790 align:middle line:84%
On the other side of the
wall, at a neighbor's,

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a Hawaiian guitar was playing.

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In my presence, the
investigator found "The Wolf"

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and showed it to Osip.

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He nodded slightly.

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Taking his leave, he kissed me.

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He was led away at 7 A.M.

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At the end of each
vision, Mandelstam

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stands with a clod of
earth, throwing bits

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at the passers-by.

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You will recognize him, Lord--

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he hated Tsarskoe
Selo, told Mayakovski--

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"stop reading your verse, you
are not a Rumanian orchestra."

00:11:29.190 --> 00:11:30.610 align:middle line:90%
But what harmony was?

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It raveled and unraveled.

00:11:33.110 --> 00:11:35.770 align:middle line:84%
Nadezhda said the
snow fell inside her,

00:11:35.770 --> 00:11:38.950 align:middle line:84%
she heard the voice of young
chickens all over her flesh.

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Nadezhda, her Yes and No
are difficult to tell apart.

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She dances, a skirt
tucked between her thighs

00:11:45.980 --> 00:11:48.580 align:middle line:90%
and the light is strengthening.

00:11:48.580 --> 00:11:50.080 align:middle line:90%
In each room's four corners--

00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:52.750 align:middle line:84%
he is making love to
her earlobes, brows,

00:11:52.750 --> 00:11:54.700 align:middle line:90%
weaking days into knots.

00:11:54.700 --> 00:11:56.740 align:middle line:84%
He is traveling
across her kitchen,

00:11:56.740 --> 00:12:01.030 align:middle line:84%
touching furniture, a small
propeller in his head turning

00:12:01.030 --> 00:12:02.590 align:middle line:90%
as he speaks.

00:12:02.590 --> 00:12:06.910 align:middle line:84%
Outside, a boy pissing
against a tree,

00:12:06.910 --> 00:12:10.120 align:middle line:90%
a beggar cursing at his cat--

00:12:10.120 --> 00:12:15.400 align:middle line:84%
that summer 1938--
the walls were hot,

00:12:15.400 --> 00:12:17.980 align:middle line:84%
the sun beat against
the city's slabs,

00:12:17.980 --> 00:12:23.700 align:middle line:84%
the city that loved to
say yes to the powerful.

00:12:23.700 --> 00:12:28.390 align:middle line:84%
At the end of each vision,
he rubbed her feet with milk.

00:12:28.390 --> 00:12:31.900 align:middle line:84%
She opened her body,
lay on his stomach.

00:12:31.900 --> 00:12:35.530 align:middle line:84%
We will meet in
Petersburg, he said,

00:12:35.530 --> 00:12:39.120 align:middle line:90%
we have buried the sun there.

00:12:39.120 --> 00:12:40.000 align:middle line:90%