WEBVTT

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I was just writing
a piece of criticism

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on Edgar Allan
Poe, which I don't

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seem to be able to stop doing.

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I reread "The Raven"
in the process,

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and it struck me how oddly
similar this new poem

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of Voznesensky's
is to "The Raven."

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In "The Raven," given a bird
which replies nevermore,

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we have a hero who indulges in
some kind of nervous hilarity

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and, finally, in
extreme self torture,

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using the nevermore on himself.

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The dial tone is doing
something of the same thing

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for Voznesensky here.

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Here's a Russian poet
who's in exile in America.

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His name is Nikolai Morshen,
and he's especially interesting

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because his imagination
is so thoroughly

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able to cope with
science, as you'll

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see in this untitled poem.

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"Nights rolled upon
the river's face,

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volcanoes flared and
overflowed, and ferns,

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which towered into space,
with paleozoic flashes

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glowed when, with
his Slavic eye,

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there crept a saurian
from paludal slime--

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my reptile ancestor-- and
stepped on the dry land

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for the first time.

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He did not then,
of course, predict

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the spate of future
generation, of linked phenomena

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in strict and
indistinguishable relation,

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or me, in that
concatenation, in whose

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world Planck and Blok connect!

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But I... what breed
am I, what kind?

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What are my past, my destiny?

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How should that far one be
divined whose modest forebear

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I shall be, whose world's pure
miracle to me, whose deeds,

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the manner of whose mind?

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Hundreds of years will
pass, perhaps millions,

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and then he will be
there, remembering us

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across that lapse, our strange
third partner, and our heir.

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And then what
magic time will do!

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All distances will
coalesce, and all awareness

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flow into the heaven
of his consciousness.

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From grey mist will materialize
his predecessors, one and all,

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whatever their degree or size,
no matter how obscure or small.

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And to that joyous herd, that
throng bound from creation

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and before, you
too shall certainly

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belong, o my
reptilian ancestor."

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That's a scientist's
poem, which involves

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a vision very like that of
Teilhard de Chardin, I think.