WEBVTT

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Here's a poem that is the
most recent one I've written.

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I make reference to
a London landmark

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here, Parliament Hill, which
is in the North of London

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on Hampstead Heath.

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And from which you can
see, most of the time,

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you can see right into
the middle of London.

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You can see as far as
St Paul's Cathedral.

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I also make a
reference to Lamartine,

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who is a very tearful poet
who is very sorry for himself

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that I had to read at school.

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After I'd written this poem last
week, I looked him up again.

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And he's just as tearful and
just as sorry for himself

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as I remembered.

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The poem is called
"Autobiography."

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And what I mean by
this title is that if I

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were to write my autobiography,
which I don't really

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intend to do, this is what
I'd like it to be like.

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"Autobiography."

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"The sniff of the real--

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that's what I'd want to get.

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How it felt to sit on Parliament
Hill on a May evening,

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studying for exams.

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Skinny, 17, dissatisfied.

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Yet sniffing such a potent air.

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The smell of grass in
heat from the day's sun.

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I've been walking through the
damp rich ways by the ponds

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and now lay on the upper
grass with Lamartine's poems.

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Life seemed all loss.

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And what was more,
I had lost whatever

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it was before I'd even had it.

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A green dry prospect,
distant babble of children.

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And beyond, distinct at
the end of the globe,

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St. Paul's like a stone thimble.

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Longing so hard to make
inclusions that the longing has

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become in memory an inclusion."

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