WEBVTT

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It's called "Song of Emergency."

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Comes from a dream.

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It's too late and I'm not
going to try and repeat

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the whole dream now
but a dream involved

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a beginning in something which
turned out later to be mud.

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And it began in a very
totally timeless state

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where the only sense active in
me was a sense of touch I feel.

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And in the course of the dream
is moving around in the mud

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and moved up closer
to the water.

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And found that not the
closer to the water I moved,

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but that the more I moved
in a certain direction,

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the more I had to alter
the way in which I moved

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my body in order
to propel myself

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from a kind of crawling
slithering thing.

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At first, into
swimming motions once

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the mud got thin
enough to be water.

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And dream included the ecstatic
experience of first perceiving

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light not objects but just
light as in the thin mud light

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could penetrate.

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And then of coming up
into the regular water

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and seeing objects, actually
seeing things fish, turtles,

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leaves and grass in
the water reflecting

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on the top of the pond.

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And then at the
end of the dream,

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an experience which
was of mistaking

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a pair of heron's legs
for two stalks of grass

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and feeding from them.

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Else, I don't know what
maybe a frog, maybe a fish,

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it never came.

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It was never clear important
in the poem, in the dream.

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But then, all of a sudden
becoming having to look up

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and looking up and
seeing a cloud,

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and in the middle of
the cloud of tiny sun.

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And then of becoming more
and more aware of something

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ominous about this
and watching it

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and then realizing that the
cloud was getting bigger,

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the sun was getting brighter.

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And only at the last
instant realizing

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that it was a heron
with its head cocked,

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it had been looking at me.

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And it was a body
that was the cloud,

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and it was his eye which was
the sun and that he had me.

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It was too late.

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And he pierced me with
his beak and it was most

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excruciating sensation that I've
ever experienced alive or dead,

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awake or sleeping, whatever.

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It was absolutely annihilating
feeling and at the same time

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at the very instant that feeling
occurred it was finished.

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And when it was finished, it was
like a totally different kind

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of feeling.

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And the best way I can think
of to describe to you what

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the feeling was, it was
as if until that moment

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of that feeling occurred, I had
been like a balloon full of air

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and had always thought that
what was real about me was

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the balloon, was the skin part.

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And that when it was
punctured the terrible pain

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was the recognition that
was not the real part of me

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at all but the disposable part.

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And that suddenly the air
which was free and could

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go everywhere and mix
with itself everywhere,

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was what turned out
really to be me after all.

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But it was like going
through a door of some kind.

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It was amazing.

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It was a very happy feeling by
the way thoroughly, thoroughly

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happy.

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"Song of Emergency."

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"After dreaming
the pure pleasure

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of a being loose
and clear water,

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diving easily in and
out of the warm mud

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and deep at the bottom, I
wake to the risks of light.

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I kick free and I streak joyous
as a bird toward the sun,

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out of the earth through
water into the air,

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where I hang for an instant free
of awareness of safety, free

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of danger in the
dominion of the heron.

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From this height I glimpse at
a distance, tall and white,

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the still gods where
they bend above the pond

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or hunch in trees
to dry those wings,

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spread glowing in the sun.

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They stare into the shallows,
they shine like clouds.

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At night, I have slept dreaming
of those red legged gods whose

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eyes are small suns.

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Who are silent but
whose rare calls

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pierce my world like claws.

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Who fly as we dream of flying
and burn against the sun

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in the great tumult of wings.

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Whose slow grace threatens us
and woos us with its beauty.

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Who consume us to survive,
whose lives we dread and envy.

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Now, I wait the
moment when suspended

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above the mid world
of water, I too

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will know the presence
of the white cloud,

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lowering the explosive sun quick
above the pierce of the beak,

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the shriek of wings."

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