And I'd like to read you finally,
a poem called "Marrakech."
We traveled to Marrakech a few years ago, in Morocco
and had a marvelous time there.
I fell in love with the whole country.
And we went down there, stayed in a fantastic hotel where
Churchill had written his memoirs of World War II
after the war.
We went to the marketplace, where
the red earth is everywhere.
And there's a great building, about 300 feet high and 50 feet
square called the Koutoubia.
And in this marketplace, towards sundown,
every day for the last 600 years,
missing only very few in centuries,
there are all kinds of things going on at the market.
You will see an old man looking like Homer with a big beard,
sitting cross-legged on a carpet.
Telling the tales of his country to the illiterate people.
You'll see a man with the bells all over him selling water.
You will see snake charmers, and you
will see all kinds of strange and wonderful people.
Well, but the thing that really got us all in our party,
was a dance we saw.
And there were about 12 men on--
who would come out on a platform like this.
Actually it's on the flat earth.
They would be from about 30 years down to 18.
There was one boy of about 12.
They were dressed only in one white garment.
They were barefooted, and they came from the Atlas mountains
beyond Marrakech.
And they were taught this dance by their fathers,
and their fathers had taught them before way
back for centuries.
And this dance was absolutely amazing.
They were so nimble, and each one
would come out forward and do a sort of a nimble dance
or like a dervish.
And they had double metal castanets,
each held in one hand.
A metal castanet that they did like this.
And it went around, and made a racket.
And there were two men on the ground,
who had taut goatskin drums.
And they'd beat them with thin crooked sticks,
and they made such a racket that you could feel the rhythm
in the bones of your chest.
And this was the most fantastic dance I ever saw.
It really just-- and you couldn't help
but be moved by it.
And the point of the Moroccans, is
that they work themselves up into such a frenzy
that they pass out.
And so this, I never thought of it when we saw it,
but I thought about it for a year or two afterwards.
And now I've come to the conclusion,
and I feel probably me being a professor for one minute,
that really this is an analogy with Aristotle's ideas
of tragedy.
You know that Aristotle said that tragedy in literature
cleanses the spirit, because it purifies the emotions of fear
and terror in us.
And when you see King Lear, or you
see Sophocles plays Oedipus or something like that,
you see Macbeth.
You see any great tragedy, the Western peoples at least
are supposed to be cleansed and purified and purged, because
of this essence of tragedy.
And it seems to me that this was an analogy here.
That this was a kind of a national way
of their progression and cleansing,
by the violence and the terrific nature of this dance.
So I'd like to close with this.
And then if you'd like, I have an encore in mind.
I just want to work you up to that, because I
want to read you an encore.
The little one about the squirrel crossing the road,
you probably know it already.
So this is Marrakech.
And if I hold up the book, you see what kind of a poem it is.
It's really an attempt at description.
It is in long lines, about a page and a half long.
And just trying to describe the dance that I have
told you about.
Now I know that you have marvelous dances out here,
and I hope to see some.
Last year, Mrs. Clark took us to see the Yaqui Indians,
and I hope to see them again this year.
It absolutely fascinated me, the pre-Easter
ceremonies of your Indians right here.
And I hope I can learn some more about that,
but this is a Moroccan dance I'm writing about.
"Marrakech."
The dance begins with the sun descending beyond the Koutoubia
in Marrakech, so ancient and so fable present.
The old tell fables, as the Moroccans
listen in eyed attention in the marketplace
of vitality and veiled women.
But the dancers, oh, the dancers,
priests of devotion from the high Atlas mountains.
Perhaps 12, a boy of 10, shining men under 30.
Their feet bare and hard on the bare hard earth,
begin to dance to two taut goatskin drums,
beaten with hard cooked sticks thin in the diameter.
The one fiercely antiphonal to the other.
Together beating compelling rhythm to action.
Action in the flow of the loose ancient garments
of the men, as they strike in both hands
double metal castanets, in the dry high air of late day.
One would come forth, loosening his devotion.
Gyrating and flashing in compelling immediacy,
total in ecstasy, overwhelming the senses and fall back.
And another would step forth lightly,
definitely began his interpretive energy.
Total devotion to sound, rhythm, style of the dance and fall
back.
And his fellow come out before, to outdo the predecessor.
Turn and leap, and gyrate in ocher ambiance.
And the drums insistence, proclaiming
efficient animal action.
The passion of primitive man exultant,
and each came forward.
Each leap taller, flash lower, turn subtler,
rose higher, prolonging intensity of animal strategy.
A rapture of magnitude pervaded the air.
Sound and sense reached to magical ability, one drummer
on his knees.
The drum head vertical, beat out the passion
of ancient centuries.
Appeared the thronging nature of tribal power,
and the laughing gods fell to the earth spent.
And the high heart bent down with them
to the earth, and the heart was raised up
to the Atlas mountains in the super abundant delirious
air of sun down.
And the laughing gods fell to the earth spent,
and the heart bent down with them to the earth.
Cleansed in the nature of rhythm and right,
the dance was a thing in itself triumphant.
Music and dance, the perfection of the free.
And before one could think of the meaning,
the driven passion of the drums begins again.
Oh, ancient Africa.
Oh, tribal ecstasy.
A dance of 600 years on the same spot, they come out again
instantaneous and eternal.
And leap and turn passionately, leap and fall.
And all are made whole again, under the red sky.
And all is made whole in the heart and time."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]