WEBVTT

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Actually, the poem--
the key poem in the book

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isn't in the book, because
I hadn't written it yet.

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This is it.

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This is the poem I think
that it kind of sums up

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the emotions of the book-- or
the attitudes in the book--

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most perfectly, or
most completely,

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or most heavy-handedly.

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I don't know.

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Most obviously.

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It's called Montjuich.

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Montjuich is a name
of several things.

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One is a cemetery.

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One is a hill--

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a mountain.

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And most famously,
a fortress, which

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commands the harbor
of Barcelona.

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And in that fortress,
hundreds of people

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have been tortured
to death or executed.

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And in my poem--

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my poem mourns the death
of one particular man--

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Francisco Ferrer-- who was
very famous when I was a kid.

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Called in Spain Ferrer
Guardia, because Ferrer

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is such a common Catalan name.

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And he opened the first
free school in Spain.

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And in 1909, Spain was at war
with the Berbers of Morocco.

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They were trying to take
bauxite out of the hills there,

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and the Berbers
didn't want them to.

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And they needed more troops.

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So they called up a draft.

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And as you know, the people
who had to go to fight the war

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were the working class.

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And they didn't want to go.

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First thing, they were
violently anti-catholic.

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And they knew that it was the
church that owned those mines.

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And so, their women, their
sisters, their daughters,

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their mothers, their
wives gathered at the port

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and refused to let them
be herded onto the ships.

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This produced what is
called in history, depending

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on whose book you
read, the terrible week

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or the beautiful week.

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And when the working
class people of Barcelona

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rose up in extraordinary anger.

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And it was like a civil
war went on for a week.

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Finally, it was
quelled, of course.

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Ferrer had been living
outside of Spain in France.

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But he'd come back about
three weeks before this,

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because his sister's
husband had died,

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and his sister was inconsolable.

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And so, he went to stay with
her in a little town about 60

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miles north of Barcelona.

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He was never in Barcelona
during this time.

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But he was arrested as one of
the dozen or so people who was

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responsible for this uprising.

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And he was tried without
benefit of a lawyer.

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On Friday he was found
guilty, on Saturday,

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and he was executed on Monday.

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And this is a poem about that.

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What the word Montjuich
means is up for grabs.

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Some people say it
means the Hill of Jews,

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because there used to
be a Jewish cemetery

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on the other side of it, where
the great Barcelona cemetery is

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now.

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And some people say
it's the Hill of Jove,

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and that the Romans
gave it that name.

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Montjuich-- Hill
of Jews says one,

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named for a cemetery long gone.

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Hill of Jove says another.

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And maybe Jove
stopped here once--

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or rests now where so many lie,
who felt God swell the Earth

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and burn along the
edges of their breath.

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Almost 70 years since
a troop of cavalry

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jingles up the silent
road, dismounted,

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and loaded their rifles
to deliver the fusillade

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into the small soft
body of Ferrer, who

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would not beg God's help.

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Later, two carpenters came,
carrying his pine coffin

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on their heads.

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Two men out of
movies not yet made.

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In near dark, the body was
unchained and fell a last time

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onto the stones.

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Four soldiers carried the box--
sweating and resting by turns--

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to where the fresh hole waited.

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And the world went
back to sleep.

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The sea, still dark as a
blind eye, grumbles at dusk.

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The air deepens, and a chill
suddenly runs along my back.

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I have come foolishly, bearing
red roses for all those

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whose blood spotted the
cold floors of these cells.

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If I could give a
measure of my own

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for each endless moment of pain,
well, what good would that do?

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You are asleep,
brothers and sisters.

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Maybe that was all the God of
this old hill could give you.

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It wasn't he who filled
your lungs with a power

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to raise your voices against
stone, steel, animal--

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against the pain exploding
in your own skulls,

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against the unbreakable
walls of the state.

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No, not he.

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That was the gift only the
dying could hand from one of you

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to the other.

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A gift like these roses I
fling off into the night.

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You chose no God
but each other--

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head, belly, groin, and heart.

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You chose the lonely road back
down these hills, empty handed.

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Breath steaming in
the cold March night.

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Or worse, the wrong
roads that led

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to black Earth and the
broken seed of your body.

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The sea spreads below, still
as dark and heavy as oil.

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As I descend step
by step, a wind

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picks up and hums through
the low trees along the way,

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like the heavens' last
groan or a song being born.

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