WEBVTT

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Now, I have a whole section
in this book of Mexican poems.

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And I thought, oh, the cool
thing is not read any of them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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As I'm too close.

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People will know it's
not exotic enough.

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Then I figured the
cooler thing is

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to read one, and let
it stop right there.

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So, that's what I'm going to do.

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I'm going to read one
called "Monte Alban."

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I'm sure many people know
about Monte Alban here.

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It's a site outside of Oaxaca.

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It's a mountaintop
that's been leveled.

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And there are
fantastic ruins there.

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It just blows you away.

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Someone went and leveled
the top of a mountain off.

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Then he built huge
temples all around it.

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When you stand up there, there
are mountains all around you.

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It blew me away.

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I went back a couple of times.

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I was living in
Oaxaca at the time.

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And I thought about it.

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And I don't like to write
poems about famous places.

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It would be like writing
about the Statue of Liberty.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I didn't think
I could manage it.

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But I remembered that I
admire Auden very much,

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and Auden could do any
of that kind of stuff.

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So, I figured I'd
approach it like Auden.

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Well, of course,
I didn't succeed.

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But that was what was
in the back of my mind.

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This was going to be an orden--

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an orden-- an Audenesque
poem, where I just

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got Monte Alban down
there and stepped away.

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You can decide for yourself.

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The Mexican poem of the evening.

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The ghosts trot back and forth
across the almost empty field,

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a plaza, once, where men came to
worship and appeal their fates,

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even as I appeal my own, but
did so massively, in stone.

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Kings were buried here.

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In the end, rulers change.

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One gives way to the next, but
the gods merely take new names

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and live where they
have always lived.

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We're sitting down.

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One knows what makes
for holy ground.

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A mountain, tumbled stone, white
puff-headed stalks of grass.

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To all men who must die,
they left this sense,

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this air of being
nothing, and yet

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part of all that men can
raised to their recall.