WEBVTT

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Although the next new poem is
about another poem, about Ohio,

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I thought for a while
that I would like--

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I've done some translating.

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And sometimes when
one translates,

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if he loves the poem
enough, it can turn

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into a real poem of his own.

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So that the translation by
Thomas Campion of Catullus's

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"Lugete, o Veneres
Cupidinesque,"

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it's not as good
as Catullus's poem,

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but Catullus couldn't
have written it.

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It's a poem of his own.

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And a poem I've loved for so
many years, so many years.

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It's the third
Georgic of Virgil,

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in which he is talking
about life in the country,

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for a while.

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He was a city person but
lived in the country.

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It turns out, by the way,
that there is a place in Ohio,

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I'll be damned, I found
out, called Mantua, Ohio.

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And my son has a girlfriend
from Mantua Ohio.

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Imagine.

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That was Mantovano was in Italy.

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It's Mantua in Italy.

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Virgil was from that place.

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And it's a little
hometown there.

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I thought I might try
a translation of that.

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Maybe I will yet as
it's worth handling,

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dealing with because he loved
his language, his native place.

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But instead of doing
that, his eclogue--

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that's the eclogue
in which he said

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the incredibly beautiful line
in the dactylic hexameter,

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"Optima dies prima fugit."

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The best days are the
first ones to flee away.

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In the pause in
the line is "ah."

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Then the rapid
word following it.

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Instead, I thought I would
try to describe something

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that happened to me one
afternoon there in Warnock,

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Ohio.

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Warnock, Ohio, was not the
best farm in the world.

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But there were a couple of odd
things that happened there.

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And one of them was that
a cow we had had a calf.

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And that is the only birth
that I've ever attended.

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If someone asked me if I
wanted to attend a birth,

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I probably would say no,
maybe I couldn't take it.

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But I didn't have any choice
that particular afternoon.

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And it took me many years
to wonder what I made of it.

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What I made of it is
this poem, such as it is.

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The poem is called, "Well,
What are You Going to Do?"

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"I took a nap one
afternoon in Ohio,

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at the end of a pasture,
just at the good moment when

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Pet, our poor lovely lay moaning
and gave birth to Marion,

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my calf.

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What was I going to do?

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All I could do was
wake and stand there.

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I don't know anything about
the problem of beautiful women.

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I was afraid to run 200
yards to call my mother

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and ask her what to do
about beautiful women.

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Besides, she
wouldn't know either.

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Two hours, two whole
hours, while Pet

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lay mumbling among the
Grimes Golden apples that

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fell from time to time.

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I ate two or three, maybe.

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What was I supposed to do
there but eat the apples

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while Marion's face
peeked out slowly.

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I ate the apples.

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And when Marion was born,
I helped her come out.

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I had been in love
with a lot of girls,

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but that was my
first time to clasp

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the woman beneath her chin
and whisper, come out to me,

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come on, come on, and
you can be Marion.

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I led Marion out of
her mother's belly,

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down in the cold autumn thorns.

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And there was a pile of horse
manure I couldn't evade.

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And so, by god, I
did not even try.

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All I could do was
fall from time to time.

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Marion's face was all
right, speckled with rust

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and more white than snow.

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The one I was the more in love
with was Pet, the exhausted.

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I lay down beside her.

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She snuffled.

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She smelled like a
Grimes Golden apple.

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Then I carried Marion 200
yards down the pasture.

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She delicately sprayed the
insides of her beginning body

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all over my work shirt.

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I don't know that I belonged
in that beautiful place.

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But what are you going to do?

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Be kind?

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Kill?

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Die?"

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