WEBVTT

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That's the poem trying
to say some of the things

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that I was talking
about at the beginning.

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It comes from a book called
Travels which is a hard poem--

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hard book to read from
because most of the poems

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are biographical poems
and they're too long.

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But there's another
poem that I want

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to read from it that
is not a long poem.

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And it takes another
aspect of the whole thing.

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It's about a man named--

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he was born Georg Edward Rumph.

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And he was born about the
same time as Ben Johnson.

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He had an ordinary
middle class German

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upbringing at the end of
the 16th century, which was

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a pretty good education really.

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Good Latin and rudimentary
medieval sciences

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but something.

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And he went to
Holland, the Dutch

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were the imperialists at the
time in his part of the world.

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And he went to Holland and
signed onto an expedition

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as he thought.

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But instead they in a sense
kidnapped him and took him out

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to the Dutch East Indies where
the survival rate of Europeans

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was about 13 months
maximum generally.

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If you didn't die of malaria
you died of something else.

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But he lived to be quite old.

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He stayed there for
the rest of his life.

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He got out of uniform,
and he became--

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he moved from the island of
Java to the island of Ambon.

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And he lived there for
the rest of his life.

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He married a woman who
was part Chinese part

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indigenous from there.

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And he had a daughter.

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And he wrote the first six
books of a Flora of the Indies

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in the beginning of
the 17th century.

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And the first six books of
an Encyclopedia of the Indies

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in Latin and illustrated them.

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And both of them were lost,
one at sea and one in the fire.

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So he rewrote them in Dutch
and illustrated them again.

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And fortunately,
the Viceroy saw them

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and realized how remarkable
they were and sent them

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to Holland to be printed.

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And he is-- you know botanists
are as jealous of each other

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in my experience as--

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you know horticulturalists
are always very impatient.

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Gardeners are very
impatient with botanists.

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They say they don't know
anything about it they just

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stay with it with their
herbarium collections

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and we know what
it looks like when

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it's growing for God's sake.

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But he was respected
by other botanists

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that many of the
names that he gave

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things are still there and
things are named for him still.

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And one reason is that
many medicinal species.

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He listened to everybody
and he tried out

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herbal remedies for things.

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And when he thought they were
good he wrote about them.

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He wrote beautifully.

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He wrote like Montaigne I
mean just wonderful prose.

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I mean, the little
essay on the hermit crab

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is one that I used to
have practically by heart

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because it's been wonderfully
translated by a man named

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Beakman that I met at
University of Massachusetts.

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But his name, he
called his name Rufus.

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Well, he lost
everything in his life.

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He lost those what he had
written for the first time.

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He lost his wife
and his daughter.

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And finally, in his latter
years he went blind.

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And the poem is called
"The blind seer of Ambon."

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I always knew that I came
from another language.

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And now even when I
can no longer see,

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I continue to arrive at words
but the leaves and the shells

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were already here and
my fingers finding

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them echo the untold
light and depth.

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I was betrayed into
my true calling

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and denied in my advancement.

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I may have seemed somewhat
strange caring in my own time

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for living things with
no value that we know.

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Language is wash over
the one wave at a time.

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When the houses fell
in the earthquake,

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I lost my wife and my daughter.

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It all roared and stood
still falling where

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they were in the daylight.

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I named for my wife a flower as
though I could name a flower.

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My wife dark and
luminous and not there.

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I lost the drawings of
the flowers in fire.

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I lost the studies
of the flowers

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my first six books in the sea.

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And I saw that the flowers
themselves were gone.

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They were indeed gone.

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I saw that my wife
was gone and I

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saw that my daughter was gone.

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Afterward, my eyes
themselves were gone.

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One day I was looking at
infinite small creatures

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on the bright sand.

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And the next day this
hearing after music.

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So this is the way I see now.

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I take a shell in my hand
new to itself and to me.

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I feel the thinness, the
warmth, and the cold.

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I listen to the water, which
is the story welling up.

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I remember the colors
in their lives.

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Everything takes me by surprise.

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It is all awake in the darkness.

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