WEBVTT

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I want to read now a
rather long poem, which was

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a long time in coming to me.

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It derives from a person
I met in Rome in 1954.

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And I've been thinking
about him ever since.

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Our first night in Rome in 1954,
we were taken around the city

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by a pleasant
young Italian water

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engineer named Dino Rotunde.

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We'd met him on the boat.

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And he'd whizzed us all
around Rome in his Alfa Romeo,

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saying, there's the forum, other
points of interest, you know.

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And finally, after
he'd rather breezily

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pointed out most
of Rome to us, he

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took us to see what he regarded
as the real wonder of the city.

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There was-- perhaps still is--

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a little joint
near the Pantheon,

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called the Pizzeria Sacrestia.

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And it wasn't really a
pizzeria, it was a restaurant,

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and bar, and hang out.

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And there was at this place
an extraordinary man, lank,

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ill looking, either saintly
or diabolical in aspect.

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He played the guitar,
and sang off color songs.

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When not doing that, he would
come to your table on request,

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and for a couple of
cigarettes or a bit of wine,

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he would read your mind.

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And well he simply
did read our minds.

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Then, and many times thereafter,
while we were in Rome.

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And we used to enjoy taking
skeptical friends around

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to have their hearts
broken by this man.

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One person we took
was the professor of--

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was the Norton professor
of Italian at Harvard.

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A fine theologian, but
a thorough skeptic.

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The sort of person
who doesn't want

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to believe in poltergeists,
because he thinks if he does,

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he may have to believe in God.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And this friend of ours,
you asked your questions

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of the mind reader in
the form of a written

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scribble in Italian.

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And our friend
wrote, where can I

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find an autographed
manuscript of Boccaccio?

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To which the mind reader gave
this answer: Stop looking.

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There is no such thing as
an autographed manuscript

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of Boccaccio.

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I think it's fairly
good mind reading.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The mind reader once
said to the professor who

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became an unwilling
but complete convert,

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it isn't pleasant, you
know, to have a mind that's

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like a common latrine.

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And since writing
this poem, I've

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heard of other mind readers
who suffered similarly.

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Well, he's talking,
the mind reader,

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to my professor friend in 1955.

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"Some things are truly lost.

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Think of a sun hat laid for
the moment on a parapet,

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while three young women,
one perhaps in mourning,

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talk in the crenellate shade.

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A slight wind plucks
and budges it.

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It scuffs to the edge, and
cartwheels into a giant view

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of some description.

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Haggard escarpments,
if you like,

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plunge down through mica
shimmer, to a moss of pines.

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Amidst which, here or there,
a half seen river lobs up

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a blink of light.

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The sun hat falls with
what free flirts and stoops

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you can imagine, down through
that reeling vista, or another.

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Unseen by any.

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Even by you or me.

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It is this when a
pipe wrench catapulted

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from the jounced back
of a pickup truck, dives

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headlong into a bushy culvert.

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Or a book whose reader is
asleep, gobbling the story,

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glides from beneath
a steamer chair

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and yields its flurried
pages to the printless sea.

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It is one thing to escape
from consciousness,

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as such things do.

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Another to be pent in
the dream cache or stony

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oubliette of someone's head.

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They found when I was
little, that I could tell

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the place of missing objects.

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I stood by the bed of a girl,
or the frayed knee of an old man

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whose face was lost in shadow.

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When did you miss it?

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People would be saying.

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Where did you see it last?

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And then those voices,
querying or replying,

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came to sound like
cries of birds

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when the leaves race and
whiten, and a black overcast

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is shelving over.

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The mind is not a landscape.

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But if it were, there would in
such case, be a tilted moon,

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wheeling beyond the wood
through which you groped,

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its fine spokes breaking
in the tangled thickets.

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There would be obfuscations.

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Paths which turn to
dried up stream beds.

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Hemlocks which invited through
shiny clearings to a groundless

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shade.

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And yet in a sure stupor,
you would come at once

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upon dilapidated cairns, abraded
moss, and half healed blazes.

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Leading to where, around
the turning of a fear,

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the lost thing shown.

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Imagine a railway platform.

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The long cars come to a
cloudy halt beside it.

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And the fogged windows
offering a view,

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neither to those within,
nor those without.

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Now in the crowd,
forgive my predilection,

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is a young woman standing
amidst her luggage.

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Expecting to be met
by you, a stranger.

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See how she turns her head.

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The eyes engaging and
disengaging, pausing

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and shying away.

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It is like that with
things put out of mind.

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As the queer saying
goes, a lost key

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hangs, trammeled
by threads, in what

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you come to see as the webbed
darkness of a sewing basket.

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Flashing a little.

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Or a photograph, misplaced
in an old ledger,

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turns its bled, oblivious
profile to rebuff your vision.

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Yet glistens with the
fixative of thought.

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What can be wiped from memory?

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Not the least meanness,
obscenity, humiliation, terror,

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which made you clench your
eyes, or pulse of happiness,

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which quickened your despair.

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Nothing can be forgotten.

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As I am not permitted to forget.

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It was not far
from that to this.

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This corner cafe table,
where, with my lank

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gray hair and vatic
gaze, I sit and drink

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at the receipt of custom.

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They come here.

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Day and night.

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So many people.

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Sad women of the quarter,
dressed in black,

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as to a black confession.

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Blinking clerks, who
half supposed that Taurus

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ruminates upon their destinies.

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Men of affairs down from Milan,
to clear it with the magus,

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before they buy or sell
some stock or other.

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My fellow drunkards.

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Fashionable folk, mocking
and ravenously credulous.

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And skeptics, bent on
proving me a fraud.

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For fear that some small
wonder, unexplained,

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should leave a
fissure in the world.

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And all St Michael's
host come flapping back.

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I give them paper and pencil.

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Turn away and light a cigarette,
as you have seen me do.

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They write their
questions, fold them up.

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I lay my hand on theirs,
and go into my frenzy.

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Raising my eyes to heaven.

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Snorting smoke.

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Lolling my head as in
the fumes of Delphi.

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And then, with shaken
spirit guided fingers,

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set down the Oracle.

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All that of course, is trumpery.

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Since nine times out of 10, what
words float up within another's

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thought surface as soon in mine.

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Unfolding there like paper
flowers in a water glass.

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In the 10th case, I
sometimes cheat a little.

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That shocks you.

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But consider.

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What I do cannot so most
conceive, be done at all.

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And when I fail,
I am a charlatan.

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Even to such as I
have once astounded.

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Whereas a tailor can mis-cut
my coat and be a tailor still.

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I tell you this because you
know that I have the gift.

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The burden.

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Whether or not I
put my mind to it,

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the world usurps me ceaselessly.

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My sixth and never resting
sense is a cheap room

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black with the anger of insomnia
whose wall boards vibrate

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with the mutters, plaints,
and flushings of the race.

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What should I tell them?

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I have no answers.

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Set your fears at rest.

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I scribble when I must.

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Your paramour is faithful.

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And your spouse is unsuspecting.

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You were not seen that
day beneath the fig tree.

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Still, be more cautious.

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When the time is right,
expect a promotion.

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I foresee a message from a far
person who is rich and dying.

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You are admired in secret.

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If in your judgment profit is in
it, you should take the gamble.

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As for these fits of
weeping, they will pass.

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It makes no difference
that my lies are bald

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and my evasions casual.

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It contents them, not to have
spoken, yet to have been heard.

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What more do they deserve if I
could give it, mute breathers

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as they are, of selfish
hopes and small anxieties?

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Faith, justice, valor.

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All those reputed
rarities of soul,

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confirmed in marble
by our public statues.

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You may be sure that
they are rare indeed,

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where the soul mopes in
private, and I listen.

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Sometimes I wonder
if the blame is mine.

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If, through a sullen
fault of the mind's ear,

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I miss a resonance in
all their fretting.

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Is there some huge
attention, do you think,

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which suffers us
and is inviolate?

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To which all hearts are open?

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Which remarks the
sparrows weighty fall?

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And overhears, in the worst
rancor, a deflected sweetness?

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I should be glad to know it.

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Meanwhile, saved by the shrewd
habit of concupiscence, which

00:11:29.460 --> 00:11:32.400 align:middle line:90%
like a visor narrows my regard.

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And drinking studiously
until my thought is a blind,

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lowered almost to the sill.

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I hanker for that place
beyond the sparrow.

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Where the wrench beds in mud.

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The sun hat hangs
in densest branches.

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And the book is drowned.

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Ah, you have read my mind.

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One more perhaps.

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A mezzo litro.

00:11:57.085 --> 00:11:57.960 align:middle line:90%
Grazie, Proffessore."

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[APPLAUSE]

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