WEBVTT

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I'll read a few
poems from the book.

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The first is called
"Corruption."

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I was writing a
series of poems that I

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was calling all of
them "Corruption"

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because they were borrowing
lines from other writers,

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and then warping them
and corrupting them.

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So this opens with a few
lines from Saint Augustine,

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and ends with some warped
lines from the German writer,

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W.G Sebald.

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"Corruption."

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"I'm about to recite
a psalm that I know.

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Before I begin, my expectation
extends over the entire psalm.

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Once I've begun, the words I
have said remove themselves

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from expectation and are now
held in memory, while those yet

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to be said remain
waiting in expectation.

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The present is a word
for only those words

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which I'm now saying.

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As I speak, the present
moves across the length

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of the psalm, which I marked for
you with my finger in the psalm

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book.

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The psalm is written in
India ink, the oldest

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ink known to mankind.

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Every ink is made up of
a color and a vehicle.

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With India ink, the color is
carbon and the vehicle, water.

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Life on our planet is also
composed of carbon and water.

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In the history of ink, which
is rapidly coming to an end,

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the ancient world turns
from the use of India ink

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to adopt sepia.

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Sepia is made from the octopus,
the squid, and the cuttlefish.

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One curious property of the
cuttlefish is that once dead,

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its body begins to glow.

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This mild phosphorescence
reaches its greatest intensity

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a few days after death and
ebbs away as the body decays.

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You can read by this light."

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