WEBVTT

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So I talked about
a mason, and I want

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to go back and read a
different kind of poem

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about someone closer, in a
way, than Paris, a friend.

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And, you know, dry stone
walling is the kind of masonry

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in which you use no mortar.

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And, like all of the
arts, it's a dying art.

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And it's practically
dead, this one.

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And there are very few
people who can do it anymore.

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The art consists of being able
to feel the wall as you go.

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Because you can feel the
center of gravity of each

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of the stones as you put it in.

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And only the gravity
of the stones,

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the center of gravity
of the stones,

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is what holds the wall together.

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These walls outlast
walls made with mortar.

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You might not expect that.

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But, you know, if you
imagine a wall with mortar,

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when the rain gets down into
the mortar and it freezes,

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what happens?

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The mortar swells,
the rocks crack,

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and the wall falls apart.

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But when there's no mortar,
the water runs through.

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And there are dry stone walls
built in the time of the Romans

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that are still standing,
without a stone missing.

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Well, it's "The Dry Stonemason."

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"The mason is dead, the gentle,
drunk master of dry walls.

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What he made of his
years crosses the slopes

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without wavering,
upright but nameless,

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ignorant in the new winter,
rubbed by running sheep.

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But the age of mortar
has come to him.

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Bottles are waiting
like fallen shrines

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under different
trees in the rain.

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And stones drip
where his hands left

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them leaning slightly inwards.

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His thirst is past.

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As he had no wife, the neighbors
found where he kept his suit.

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A man with no family,
they sat with him.

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When he was carried
through them,

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they stood by their own dead.

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And they have buried him among
the graves of the stones."

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