WEBVTT

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I wanna conclude with a
poem by James Wright which

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is not a terribly famous
poem, but it is an elegy.

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It has a delicacy
and a modesty I

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think that I love a
great deal about it.

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It's called Lighting a
Candle for W.H. Auden.

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And I like to think
that, some of what

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we feel for right
perhaps, may be

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in the conclusion of this poem.

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There's a bit of German in
it and I will mispronounce

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it, so, forgive it.

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Lighting a candle for W.H.
Auden at the Church of Maria

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am Gestade, Vienna.

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The poet kept his promise
to the Earth before he died,

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he sleeps now in Kirchstetten,
some 20 miles from here.

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I did not go to
mourn him, although I

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could have gone and found
him among beaches, best

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to leave him alone.

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Maria am Gestade,
Mary on the shore,

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the loud gouge of the
subway scuttles my silences,

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if I come here to
laud a wise shadow,

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I restore the first
light in my hallway,

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a strange forgiving grace.

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20 miles west, Vienna
scrambles to keep its trees.

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Since 1957, the poet,
shragged and wise,

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sang in an Austrian
choir, a sudden holiness

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behind the crag-faced fire, the
prayer, the good man's prayers.

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I happen now to be
within his 20 miles,

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kindly, as Thomas Hardy,
whose dream the towpath fills,

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the poet Auden lies down
his 20 miles from here,

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his perfect love is limestone,
Maria on the shore, what have I

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got to do with a
kind poet's death?

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One day he wrote
to me, I had a book

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to give, I gave my book
Maria, while Auden was awake,

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I give you my small candle,
for the large masters' sake.

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[APPLAUSE]

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