WEBVTT

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Well, this is really
going to be fun.

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River Song drove
in from LA today;

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that turns out to
be a long drive.

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They're playing in Phoenix
tomorrow and I'm so happy to--

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I'm so happy to be
in the band again.

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They don't let us
poets out very much.

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And we're lonely and we mope
and we just are by ourselves.

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And I'm with this
wonderful group tonight.

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And there's so much to say
about what we're going to do.

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I'm going to say
hardly nothing at all.

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But we're thinking
about different ways

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that the poem is
related to music

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and that a song is
related to words.

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We're going to go back and
forth in all kinds of varieties

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tonight.

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I'll talk a little bit
about that as we go

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and to say to Hannah and Tyler
thank you for this chance.

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We're just going to warm up.

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Greg and I are going
to warm up a little bit

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with a suite of, I don't
know, phrases I think, maybe.

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Do you know the old
song "You Belong To Me?"

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Remember that one?

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(SINGING) See the
pyramids along--

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Yeah, keep that in your mind.

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[PLAYING GUITAR]

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See the pair of us
raining and mourning.

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The first soft ashes along the
high road running the far ridge

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of pines, ripped wild to
timbers by storming to shred.

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See the white shreds, like
coals, like a sudden sorrow.

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See the partial moon.

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See the cut sky.

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See us serene with singing.

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Are we merry?

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Are we rueful?

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Neither is there sufficient
wording for what follows.

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All the muffled horns
pleading but too late

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along the last route
of what remains.

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Can you see us?

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What can you see there?

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Lost leaves waiting to
come back as leaves.

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The anniversary.

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All the years of nights
wrapped for each other.

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All the joy but later
all the trouble.

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Less trouble than joy.

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And there's one night
sky so full of stars.

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Each floats farther away that's
the low wing wash of a hunting

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owl, so close overhead.

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I didn't hear until
it was beyond.

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All night walking
on the flat road.

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I didn't see pass the great
freighter of a shared life.

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Furrows in the cut field pushed
up from a prowl I didn't know

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had sailed by.

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And where has it gone?

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Magnolia.

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We were done for.

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Things broken.

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Things ugly.

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It being the shut end of night.

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Morning breaking,
more like a bruise

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smeared through the wet
few uppermost leaves.

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Not yet light so
much as less dark.

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They shouldn't grow
this far North.

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That's what the book says.

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What book?

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What I meant was each
day begins in the dark?

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That's useless.

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That's too late.

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That's a pathetic thing to say.

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Older than bees, the Magnolia
more primitive, the book says,

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whose carpels are
extremely tough.

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They do not flower in sepals.

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They do not want such
differentiation in their flower

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parts from whence
the term tepals.

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They open the anthers
splitting themselves out.

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That's your melodrama.

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No, they split at the
front facing the flower

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center, 16 something.

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Pierre Magnol.

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Morning starting through
them like a purple bruise,

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then a cloud, one small pale
blue stretch mark, another,

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then another.

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That's not right.

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Flowers developed to encourage
pollination by beetles.

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Too early for bees.

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Grew tough to avoid
damage by said beetles.

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There you have it.

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Magnolia virginia.

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Subfamily Magnolioideae,
of the family Magnoliaceae.

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Relations have been puzzling
taxonomists for a long time

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to survive ice ages,
tectonic up tearing,

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slow drift of the continents,
a distribution scattered,

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things too old for change,
muteness in the half light,

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and malignant.

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Stop it!

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Please, please.

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They shouldn't be
this far North.

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They bloom in a cup
full of pink fire.

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Each one lit by an old oil.

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Before us, the bees.

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Before us, the bees, the trees,
the beetles, these trees.

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So what?

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We had walked out earlier.

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The porch, late
terrible dark night.

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Their natural range of
disjointed dispersal.

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No light.

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The Magnolia.

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The eye begins to see then
the long horrible scrape

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on its trunk.

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His single stretching
paring of the bark back,

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but he didn't finish his
discomfort, his antler velvet,

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a cloud of sawdust and scrapings
beneath like small remains

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of a cold fire.

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All night, trying,
then no longer trying.

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That's when we walked out.

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He must have run.

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As a portent.

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At least there was a song,
timorous of wing beat,

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snow drift, ash of red
horizon, then somewhere calling

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as under one's breath.

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I did not hope you
would find me wanting.

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And the next extinction
on every wing.

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