WEBVTT

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And then this is
an abridged version

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of the longer poem,
which is called

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"(dis)orient" dis in
parentheses and then orient

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not only in parentheses
but lowercase,

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and then the word orient.

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It's an odd blending of three
different texts, basically,

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spliced in with
my own narrative.

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One of the texts
I was looking at

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was by a man named
Wilfred Bion who

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was a very strange
psychoanalyst who

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tried to apply mathematical,
and cartographic, and physics

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properties to basically
psychoanalysis.

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And he was mainly writing
about the idea of containment

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and how we know what
our container is,

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how it comes from in the
womb and our mother is

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our container, our
fear that's projected

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gets processed
through the mother

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and given back to us in a
way that makes it bearable.

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So what I was tying this
into is my own constant

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trying to figure out where I am
and who's reflecting back to me

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what and how to map the
circumference of my container.

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I compared it to mapping
by the Jesuits in China

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and the Great Lakes where they
were obsessed with mapping

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these bodies of water.

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And hopefully it comes together.

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And I'll begin with
the two epigrams,

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one by Wilfred Bion and one from
Père Albanel who is a Jesuit.

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Wherever there are quotes
from the Jesuit relations,

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hopefully you can just
tell that I'll speed up

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and you can realize it's prose.

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OK, the first one by Bion.

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"Meaning is revealed
by the pattern formed

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in the light thus trapped
not by the structure

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of the carved work itself".

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Then by Père
Albanel: "At length,

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all our journeys which were made
only by paths all strewn with

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crosses, came to an end very
fittingly at a lake bearing

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the name of the Cross from
its having the perfect shape

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of one".

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"How quickly we prescribe
the shape of all things.

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In the instance
of disorientation,

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a dim shimmering
projects uncontainable

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fear, spreads out
from our wooden boat.

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Separations sound soft as
wool pulled from a spindle.

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Alone on our glassy seats
and rocking, overcome with

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need to chart the water light
between the bow and the border

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with reference to ourselves,
its distance and what

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tribes dwell on shores.

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To place myself when
I have lost you.

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Marker.

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Born on the shore
of your consequence,

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though absent when you
came, your desire to know

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periphery, the jagged
coast of your container.

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Mapped by echo and
story, a cry returned

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by crosses along
the strand does not

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imply acceptance of
your plan or shape.

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Echo, mirror, story
each bent to serve.

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Do not listen to me but
yourself listening to me.

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What is returned to us by
recount or reflection rendered

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lying.

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We obtained all the information
we could from the Indians who

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had frequented those regions
and we even traced out from

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their reports a map with the
whole of the new country,

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Père Marquette.

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You've informed me of plans
for dark men dance with spades,

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their black hair a
whirl, and others

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where yellow men pound winter
rivers that their waters not

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field a freeze.

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A marble boat hovers in a vast,
bright lake which, in my mind,

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bears your name for its having
the perfect shape of you.

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But how much faith is required
before making the projection,

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relating your stories?

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I feel the irritable
reaching looking steadily

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to your experience till
the pattern emerges,

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a wind across her surface
and you shiver in every limb.

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And I would not make
a rhinoceros of you.

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Dürer how you erred drawing
the creature on scene,

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mapping the scaled legs of
the rhino, his armored plates,

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the color of a
speckled tortoise.

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An account of you
naked in the gymnasium

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before others, foreigners.

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Your long skin
and broad farmer's

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feet if I were to sketch
you from your experience.

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If the savages are to be
believed in one place where

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the birds shed their
feathers at molting time,

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any savages or deer coming to
the spot are buried in feathers

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over their heads and are often
unable to extricate themselves,

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Père Albanel.

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But disregarding your own
savage account of your skin,

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I draw you sleeping or naked
before a mirror, buried

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beneath the down of
your cruel forearm.

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Supplemented by tales all
error and conjecture reflected,

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I recall your sounding
points as security,

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skin your body for meridian.

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Surrounded now by minute links
which impregnated with cruelty

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link your parts together
cruelly, orient or disorient.

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Huronia and Cathay.

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The land bridge cannot
be forced to function.

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What is not familiar
on either side

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more important than what is
as naming the rapid Lachine

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does not move China closer.

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In fear of dislocation, I
returned to my drawings of you.

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Consider my meridian
neither Paris nor Beijing.

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No map is a neutral document,
both in selectivity of content

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and a sign there is bias.

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The fine rendering of a pale
blue delta on your thigh

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fades to cool yellow whiteness.

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And all that is not you, the
wall, the pillow, the stair

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give way to darkness.

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Delicate color disappears.

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An atlas of the rivers on
the underside of your foot.

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An atlas of the line where
your chest curves to arm.

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An atlas of your open eye.

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The many drawings
you'll never see.

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And my trips to the liquid
parts of you, more apostolic

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than geometric.

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The glistening
rim of your mouth.

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Where this great lake
discharges its waters

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is very advantageous to
perform religious functions

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since it is the
great resort of most

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of the savages of these regions.

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Charting by echo sense, both
thought and real, compelled

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to seek asylum in fiction
because, disguised as fiction,

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the truth occasionally
slips through.

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But whose truth?

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Whose meridian already would
show you a proper placement.

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Not wanting to move you away
by either idolatry or insult.

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When seeing yourself so large,
myself in a distant corner,

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or sometimes drawn so small
you are lost in the warm court

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beneath my arm.

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The more ignorant began to
make fun of such a description,

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but the more intelligent, seeing
such an orderly arrangement

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of parallel lines of
latitude and longitude,

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could not resist believing
the whole thing true,

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while the reach.

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Born between inland
seas, I traveled

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towards water's empirical truth,
the roiling glass reflection.

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Show me how I've acted,
looked, done, give to me.

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Water formed borders.

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The Silk City of Suzhou carved
from the lake bed contained

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by canal echo.

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The other returns to
us unthinkable dread

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projected through
revelry in bearable form.

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The sound of the oar returned by
the tiled roofs of Han Shan Sì

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or hear the loons cry,
resounding from painted rocks

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beside the Sault.

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It is that beauty
which is nothing

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but the beginnings of
terror that we are still

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this able to bear.

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A bat etched into a
charred canyon wall

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or carved on a beam above
the canal's east gate

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is an empathetic creature.

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Charting solely by
what is returned,

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each image projected through
my experience of you,

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with you bounced off your
biased and tender aesthetic.

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The lakes laid to align
for missionary zeal,

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influenced by the
most ardent desire

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to make him known and adored by
all peoples of all countries.

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Lacus Huronem et Tai Hu. 

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Aware of the
empirical and angered

00:08:25.270 --> 00:08:28.750 align:middle line:84%
by infidels who blur all
distinction between actual

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lived space and imaginary
idealized space,

00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:37.750 align:middle line:84%
not above adding soft folding
heels below an auspicious ridge

00:08:37.750 --> 00:08:41.620 align:middle line:84%
to create a more
favorable geometric space.

00:08:41.620 --> 00:08:44.080 align:middle line:84%
Linking the lid
to the imagined, I

00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:47.860 align:middle line:84%
recall only the silent
pause between harsh words.

00:08:47.860 --> 00:08:51.850 align:middle line:84%
The reconciliation
not the wronging.

00:08:51.850 --> 00:08:53.740 align:middle line:84%
Wanting to avoid
the empty space,

00:08:53.740 --> 00:08:57.700 align:middle line:84%
he moves in and fills the
room with familiar objects.

00:08:57.700 --> 00:09:00.700 align:middle line:84%
Lying beneath the pine in the
damp scent of red needles,

00:09:00.700 --> 00:09:02.830 align:middle line:90%
a white bow bends over me.

00:09:02.830 --> 00:09:06.220 align:middle line:84%
The senses ring familiar
and I hang pictures of you

00:09:06.220 --> 00:09:09.130 align:middle line:84%
and I across the
hostile void, then

00:09:09.130 --> 00:09:11.080 align:middle line:90%
comfort comes in recognition.

00:09:11.080 --> 00:09:14.020 align:middle line:90%


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The little people who inhabit
these shifting tenements

00:09:16.630 --> 00:09:18.610 align:middle line:84%
strike camp in the
morning all together

00:09:18.610 --> 00:09:20.980 align:middle line:84%
to go fishing or
work in the rice.

00:09:20.980 --> 00:09:23.860 align:middle line:84%
They sew and gather
here three times a year.

00:09:23.860 --> 00:09:26.170 align:middle line:84%
One might say they're ready
to embrace their religion

00:09:26.170 --> 00:09:27.640 align:middle line:90%
but you would be mistaken.

00:09:27.640 --> 00:09:31.630 align:middle line:84%
They respond coldly, your
religion is not in our books.

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It is a strange religion.

00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:37.210 align:middle line:90%
--Père de Prémare. 

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The Indians gather and prepare
rice for food as follows.

00:09:40.540 --> 00:09:43.900 align:middle line:84%
In the month of September, which
is the proper time for harvest,

00:09:43.900 --> 00:09:46.630 align:middle line:84%
they go in canoes through
these fields of wild rice

00:09:46.630 --> 00:09:49.030 align:middle line:84%
and shake its ears
into the canoe.

00:09:49.030 --> 00:09:51.430 align:middle line:84%
I told these wild rice
people of my design

00:09:51.430 --> 00:09:54.010 align:middle line:84%
to go and discover
remote nations in order

00:09:54.010 --> 00:09:57.460 align:middle line:84%
to teach them the mysteries
of our holy religion.

00:09:57.460 --> 00:10:00.120 align:middle line:84%
They told me that I would meet
nations who would never show

00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:04.450 align:middle line:84%
mercy to strangers but break
their heads for no reason. --Père

00:10:04.450 --> 00:10:06.450 align:middle line:90%
Marquette.

00:10:06.450 --> 00:10:10.080 align:middle line:84%
What I tell you is what I want
to hear but the words are dull,

00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:12.310 align:middle line:90%
a mouthful of rice.

00:10:12.310 --> 00:10:15.660 align:middle line:84%
Now making opposite shores
connect the land bridge

00:10:15.660 --> 00:10:18.030 align:middle line:90%
dead in the water.

00:10:18.030 --> 00:10:20.670 align:middle line:84%
As stroking the rough
skin of the pine above me

00:10:20.670 --> 00:10:23.010 align:middle line:84%
does not make it
yours, my fingers

00:10:23.010 --> 00:10:26.130 align:middle line:90%
through your hair, needles.

00:10:26.130 --> 00:10:28.860 align:middle line:84%
And the coast shifts
regardless of our desire

00:10:28.860 --> 00:10:31.170 align:middle line:90%
for things to remain the same.

00:10:31.170 --> 00:10:34.740 align:middle line:84%
The pines now replaced
by silos and stacks.

00:10:34.740 --> 00:10:38.610 align:middle line:84%
An image of you constructed
but never abandoned.

00:10:38.610 --> 00:10:42.990 align:middle line:84%
From the boat, from a distance,
so simple to assume quietude.

00:10:42.990 --> 00:10:45.180 align:middle line:84%
Calm points of
placement along the

00:10:45.180 --> 00:10:48.210 align:middle line:84%
shore, despite the
maddening clang of tin

00:10:48.210 --> 00:10:50.820 align:middle line:90%
from elevators along the canal.

00:10:50.820 --> 00:10:54.720 align:middle line:84%
And from water's edge
the boat, assumed silent,

00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:56.610 align:middle line:84%
though the deafening
clap of wind

00:10:56.610 --> 00:11:00.450 align:middle line:84%
through skins from the
mast both fore and aft.

00:11:00.450 --> 00:11:04.200 align:middle line:84%
Confused by what is returned
from what was imagined,

00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:07.410 align:middle line:84%
lost when the roar that
exists on the other side

00:11:07.410 --> 00:11:08.865 align:middle line:90%
of the silence."

00:11:08.865 --> 00:11:09.780 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:11:09.780 --> 00:11:12.230 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:11:12.230 --> 00:11:13.000 align:middle line:90%