WEBVTT

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And I'll read a few
sections from the title

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poem, "Genius Loci."

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This poem is set
in Prague and it

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moves through different
places and scenes

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and different
periods in history.

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But the one motif you
have to know about,

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if you don't have the
book in front of you,

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is that it includes little
excerpts of poems that were

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written by the children
who died at Terezín.

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Terezín, as many of you know,
was a ghetto in Bohemia,

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where many Jews and others were
taken and made to live before

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they were sent to
the death camps.

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And there were
schools there where

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the children were taught
painting and drawing

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and wrote poems.

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So almost all of the
children who were sent there

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were executed or died
from the illnesses

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and the poor conditions
of the ghetto.

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But their art survived.

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And so there are some
fragments of their poems

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that scatter through this.

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It's a long poem, I'm just going
to read some of the sections.

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Give you a feel for it, but
it's way too long to read here.

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So each little section has a
kind of subtitle, Genius Loci.

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"River."

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"Rocks have the oldest
knowledge on Earth.

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Rivers have the oldest
names and determine

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where the cities shall be built
and what shall be their shape.

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The Vltava here, sinuous
and slow, so the city

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turns and turns back in
two and against itself.

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Streets winding like
folds of the brain,

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so that finding your
way means getting lost.

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Arch, alley, cobblestone,
the angels and demons

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descended to perch on
rooftop and balustrade

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enjoying the beauty and
soot that only mortals can

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construct.

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The salmon are lost,
gone half a century.

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Who counts fish when half-track
tanks roll into town.

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But the river still does its
work, harboring coots, grebes,

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and mute swans.

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The river keeping
its own clock, doing

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its commerce of moving silt
and gravel, rafting birds

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downstream.

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Here the weak die
easy as a feather.

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And when they die,
they die forever."

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