WEBVTT

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I had a friend, Daniel Simko.

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He was the translator of the
great Austrian poet Georg

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Trakl.

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Georg Trakl.

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The book that he translated
is called Autumn Sonata.

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It's really beautiful.

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When the-- I'm going
back now to 1989.

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The Soviet Empire is collapsing.

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And both Daniel's
family and my family

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both from former Czechoslovakia.

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And Daniel came right after
the Warsaw Pact invasion

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of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

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He was a kid when he came
to the United States.

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He became a really
close friend of mine.

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And when the walls started
coming down in Germany

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and the Velvet Revolution
happened in Prague,

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Daniel said, we have
to go there right now,

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because I have to go get my
jazz records from the attic

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where I left them.

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And I said, Daniel, they
have been there for 22 years.

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They've been in the
attic for 22 years.

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They're probably
not good anymore.

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And he said, no, it's
a great collection,

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plus I have books
and many things.

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We have to go.

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And he said, besides,
you can find your family.

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So we went, and Daniel had two
suitcases, one full of clothes

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and one full of
books, various books

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that he wanted to give to people
there, and have for himself,

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and give away, and so on.

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So we went through Vienna.

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We were going to go
to Vienna, rent a car,

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drive across the bridge,
and go into Bratislava.

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That turned out not
to be a good plan,

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but I don't have
time to tell you why.

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Anyway, we were in
this hotel, and Daniel

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was a smoker, chain smoked.

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So he was always looking
for a light from everybody

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all the time.

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And he put down the
suitcases on the sidewalk

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in front of the
hotel in Austria,

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went looking for a light,
and one of the suitcases

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disappeared.

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It was the one with
the books in it.

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So I wrote this poem.

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I thought about that for years.

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Daniel died suddenly in 2004.

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And so I'm going to read a
couple of poems in his honor

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and for him.

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But the first one is
called The Lost Suitcase.

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And it is about the experience
of losing the suitcase.

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He talked about that
suitcase the whole trip.

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I wish I had the suitcase.

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The problem is I
don't have the books.

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This went on and on.

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You probably traveled with
somebody like that in your life

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at some point.

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But it became funny.

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So this is The Lost Suitcase.

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So it was with the suitcase
left in front of the hotel,

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cinched, broke and locked,
papered with world ports,

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carrying what
mattered until then.

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When turning your back to
cup a match, it was taken,

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and the thief
expecting valuables

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instead found books
written between wars.

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Gold attic light,
mechanical birds singing,

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and the chronicle
of your country's

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final hours what, by means of
notes, you hoped to become.

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A noun on paper,
paper dark with nouns.

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Swallows darting through
a basilica, your hands

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up in smoke, a cloud about to
open over the city, pillows

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breathing shallowly, where you
had lain a ghost in a hospital

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gown and hear your
voice principled,

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tender, scoffing through a
fence woven with pine boughs.

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Writing is older than glass
but younger than music,

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older than clocks or porcelain
but younger than rope.

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Dear one who even in
speaking is silent,

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for years, I have searched,
usually while asleep,

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when I have found the suitcase,
open, collecting snow,

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still holding your vade mecum
of the infinite, your dictionary

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of the no-longer-spoken, a
commonplace of wounds casually

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inflicted, and the slender
ledger of truly heroic acts.

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Gone is your atlas of
countries unmarked by war.

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Absent, your manual for
the preservation of ours.

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The incunabulum is
lost, both your earliest

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book and a hatching place
for your mechanical birds,

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but the collection
of apercus having

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to do with light laying
its eggs in your eyes

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was found along
with the prophecy

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that all mass murders
were early omens.

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In an antique bookshop,
I found your catechism

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of atrophied faiths.

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So I lay you to rest without
your pslater, nor the monograph

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wherein you state your most
unequivocal and hard-won

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proposition, that
everything must happen

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but to whom doesn't matter.

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Here are your books as if they
were burning, being there now

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and wake to tell
me who you were.

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