WEBVTT

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So it's been a huge pleasure
to return to Tucson.

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I was here over 10 years ago.

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And I always wanted to return.

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And now I'm back.

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I'd like to thank
a lot of people.

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I'd like to thank Marc, who
picked us up at the airport.

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To Tony Luebbermann, who drove me
around last time, 10 years ago.

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And happy to say he's
going to drive me

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around tomorrow with Karen.

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And to Cybele, Julie,
Hannah, and Tyler.

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Thank you very much
for having me here.

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It'd be entirely
wrong of me to finish

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on these short,
cheerful, buoyant poems.

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So I don't want you to go away
with a spring in your step.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So this is another one of these
invented Scots narratives.

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It's dedicated to John Burnside.

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And I'd like to thank you
all very much for coming out

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tonight.

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This is called "At Roane Head."

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"You'd know her house
by the drawn blinds.

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By the cormorants pitched
on the boundary wall,

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the black crosses of their
wings hung out to dry.

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You'd tell it by the
quicken and the pine that

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hid it from the sea and from
the brief light of the sun.

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And by Aonghas the collie, lying
at the door where he died--

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a rack of bones
like a sprung trap.

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A fork of barnacle
geese came over

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with that slow
squeak of rusty saws.

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The bitter seas
complaining pull and roll.

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A wicker of pigeons
lifting in the wood.

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She's had four sons--

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I knew that well enough.

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And each one wrong.

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All born blind, they say.

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Slack-jawed and simple,
web-footed, rickety as sticks.

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Beautiful faces, I'm
told, though blank as air.

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Someone saw them once outside,
hirpling down to the shore,

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and said they were
fine swimmers.

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But I would have guessed that.

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Her husband left her,
said they couldn't be his.

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They were more fish than human.

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Said they were beglamoured
and searched their skin

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for the showing marks.

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For years, she tended
each difficult flame.

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Their tight, flickering bodies.

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Each night, she closed
the scales of their eyes

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to smoor the fire.

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Until he came again that
last time, thick with drink.

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Saying he'd had enough of
this, all this witchery,

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and made them stand in a row
by their beds, twitching.

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Their hands flapped.

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Herring eyes rolled
in their heads.

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He went along the line,
relaxing them one after another

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with a small knife.

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It's said she goes
out every night

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to lay blankets on the
graves to keep them warm.

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It would put the heart
across you, all that grief.

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There was an otter
worrying in the leaves.

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A heron looping
slow over the water

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when I came at scraich
of day back to her door.

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She'd hung four
stones in a necklace,

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wore four rings on the hand
that led me past the room

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with four small
candles burning, which

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she called the room of rain.

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Milky smoke poured
up from the grate

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like a waterfall in reverse.

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And she said my name,
and it was the only thing

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and the last thing
that she said.

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She gave me a skylark's
egg in a bed of frost.

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Gave me twists of
my four sons' hair.

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Gave me her husband's
head in a wooden box.

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Then she gave me the
sealskin, and I put it on."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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