WEBVTT

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A couple of years ago, Annie
and I were in Yugoslavia.

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We had never been in
Yugoslavia before.

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We had gone to Europe.

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We had done a lot of--

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both of us done a lot
of wandering around

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before we were married, and now
we go wandering around again,

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only we wander in more places.

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I suppose that's the
significance of our getting

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married.

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We were going to
be in Europe and we

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heard from some very
nice people in Yugoslavia

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who asked us to come there.

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There was a festival of writers.

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I don't know if you've
ever been in Yugoslavia.

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We hadn't been there.

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We didn't know quite
what to expect,

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although people wrote
us very nice letters

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before we came there.

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But we had a hard time
finding our way from--

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we have had a hard time
finding the Yugoslavian writers

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in Belgrade, and then we had
a hard time finding our way

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from Zagreb to Belgrade.

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But once we found the writers we
flew through a wild rainstorm,

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we woke in the morning and
here's this most spectacular

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place in Macedonia.

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And it is, on the
honest to God Macedon.

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Philip of Macedon and Alexander
the Great was born there.

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We woke in the
morning and the place

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was so spectacularly
beautiful that we started

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to avoid the
literary conferences

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between the Russians and
the communists from Morocco,

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and the rest and accepting
the spirit of the Yugoslavians

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who are very beautiful,
very independent people,

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we wandered around on our own.

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We didn't know the language.

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We had some French, German,
and Italian available to us,

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and people didn't want to
admit that they knew German.

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They knew it perfectly well.

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Because the Germans
were down there and--

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well, I wouldn't admit that
I knew Germany, either,

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I tell them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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We took a walk one
afternoon realizing

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that we didn't
know the language,

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and the place where we
stayed is called Lake Ohrid,

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and it's way up in the mountains
in the South Central Yugoslavia

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in the province of Macedonia.

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"Afternoon and
Evening at Ohrid."

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I walked with a browned woman
in a time that grieved her.

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The end of summer above
blue water and the weeds

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came out wondering to
her about their names.

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There was no one
there to tell her,

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in Serbo-Croatian, the names
of that small flower song,

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and so we had to
keep our own words

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in the vastness of that place.

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And the dimness of mountains
across the huge water

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and my grieving love
wondering about being alone

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in the world, and my
love's clear face.

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How could I tell her
about their clear names?

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I did not know them.

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I had to hold her
that was all I had.

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So I began.

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This one is the sun
blooded eye of a man who

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drifted weeping
downhill into water,

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gathering gathering,
the awake woman.

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How are young lovers going
to take their way and talk

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together? ,

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Well for the first time in my
life, I shut up and listened.

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Those little birds,
eight singing

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in a language that is
strange to you and me.

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So our love for them is a
silly love, a sooth gathering

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and ringing in a
coil of snail shells.

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The one thing that I most longed
for to meet in the wildness

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here was a spider.

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I already knew my friends,
the spiders, their mountains.

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Every spider in
America is the shadow

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of a beautiful woman, shy,
marveling at the architecture

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of my own eyes.

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I found the best spider here.

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She spoke the best language,
and it spins her face.

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She wandered ahead of
me, muttering to herself

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that language of grief,
the mountains and water

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that are always a strange face,
browned at the end of summer.

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Ahead of me on
the mountain path,

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my brown love told me
clearly, come to me

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and love me clearly with the
thinning shadow of the turtle.

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I missed the turtle the first
time I caught up with my love.

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So we walked on.

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Then we walked back.

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Oh, you should have seen her.

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My love said to me
she was just going

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home between one
road and another,

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and we don't even
know in Serbo-Croatian

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What is your name, I said.

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I love you, she said.

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