WEBVTT

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All right, last poem.

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I'm hoping most of
you know this poem.

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I bet you do.

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"A snake came to my
water-trough on a hot, hot day.

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And I, in pajamas for
the heat, to drink there.

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In the deep, strange-scented
shade of the great dark carob

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tree, I came down the
steps with my pitcher,

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and must wait, must
stand and wait,

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for there he was at
the trough before me.

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He reached down from a fissure
in the earth-wall in the gloom

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and trailed his yellow-brown
slackness soft-bellied down,

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over the edge of
the stone trough,

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and rested his throat
upon the stone bottom.

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And where the water had
dripped from the tap,

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in a small clearness, he sipped
with his straight mouth, softly

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drank through his straight
gums, into his slack, long body,

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silently.

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Someone was before me
at my water-trough.

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And I, like a
second-comer, waiting.

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He lifted his head
from his drinking,

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as cattle do, and looked at me
vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

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and flickered his two
forked tongue from his lips,

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and mused a moment, and stooped,
and drank a little more.

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Being earth-brown,
earth-golden from the burning

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bowels of the Earth on the
day of Sicilian July with Etna

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smoking.

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The voice of my education
said to me, he must be killed.

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For in Sicily, the black,
black snakes are innocent,

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the gold are venomous.

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And voices in me said,
"If you were a man,

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you would take a stick and break
him now and finish him off."

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But must I confess
how I liked him?

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How glad I was he had come
like a guest in quiet,

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to drink at my water-trough,
and depart peaceful, pacified,

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and thankless, into the
burning bowels of this Earth?

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Was it cowardice that
I dared not kill him?

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Was it perversity that
I long to talk to him?

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Was it humility to
feel so honored?

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I felt so honored.

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And yet, those voices,
"If you were not afraid,

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you would kill him."

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And truly, I was afraid.

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I was most afraid.

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But even so, honored
still more that he

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should seek my hospitality
from out the dark door

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of the secret Earth.

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He drank enough, and
lifted his head, dreamily,

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as one who has drunken,
and flickered his tongue

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like a forked night on
the air, so black, seeming

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to lick his lips, and
looked around like a god,

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unseeing into the air, and
slowly, turned his head,

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and slowly, very slowly,
as if thrice adream,

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proceeded to draw his
slow length curving round,

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and climb again the broken
bank of my wall-face.

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And as he put his head
into that dreadful hole,

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and as he slowly drew up,
snake-easing his shoulders,

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and entered father, a sort
of horror, a sort of protest

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against his withdrawing
into that horrid black hole,

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deliberately going
into the blackness

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and slowly drawing
himself after,

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overcame me now his
back was turned.

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I looked around.

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I put down my pitcher.

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I picked up a clumsy log and
threw it at the water trough

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with a clatter.

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I think it did not hit him.

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But suddenly, that part of
him that was left behind,

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convulsed in undignified
haste, writhed like lightning,

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and was gone into
the black hole.

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The earth-lipped fissure in
the wall-front, at which,

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in the intense still noon,
stared with fascination.

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And immediately, I regretted it.

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I thought how paltry, how
vulgar, what a mean act.

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I despised myself and the voices
of my accursed human education.

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And I thought of the albatross.

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And I wish he would
come back, my snake.

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For he seemed to me again like
a king, like a king in exile,

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uncrowned in the underworld,
now, due to be crowned again.

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And so, I missed my chance
with one of the lords of life.

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And I have something
to expiate--

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a pettiness."

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