WEBVTT

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I've been enjoying
your American autumn

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in various places around this
country in the past three

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weeks.

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And I thought New
England's idea of autumn

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was very different from
Colorado's a few days ago.

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And I'm happy to say, Colorado's
is very different from yours.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So a pleasure to be here
again, after 10 years.

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But as it is autumn, well,
I like to think it's autumn,

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I thought I'd read a
translation of an early poem

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by Rilke called "Herbst", which
means autumn, as you know.

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I've called it "fall", just
to make you feel at home.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I knew that Rilke wrote
it very soon after he

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arrived in Paris in 1902.

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But it was only much later,
after the poem was published

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in a book, after the Twin
Towers had gone down,

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I found out that Rilke
actually wrote it

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on the 11th of September.

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Fall.

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The leaves are falling,
falling from trees

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and dying gardens far
above us, as if their slow,

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freefall was the sky declining.

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And tonight, this heavy
Earth is falling away

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from all the other stars,
drawing into silence.

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We are all falling, now.

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My hand, my heart, stall
and drift in darkness,

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see-sawing down.

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And we still believe there
is one who sifts and holds

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the leaves, the lives of
all those softly falling.

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