WEBVTT

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The setting of this
poem requires a word.

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It's called "To a Little
Girl, One Year Old,

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in a Ruined Fortress."

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And two other sort of
footnotes to it, the word rocca

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is the Italian
word for fortress.

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And Philipus here is Philip
of Spain, Philip II of Spain

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who built the fortress.

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The scene is a great
fortress, a medieval fortress,

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or a late 16th century fortress
over the Mediterranean,

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blood soaked with history.

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And in it, a little
girl one-year-old

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with golden hair and
a smile of an angel

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in the midst of all of the
ruins and agony of history.

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It's called "Sirocco."

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It's part of a series
about that spot.

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To a place of ruined
stone we brought you--

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you being always the
little girl in the poem--

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we brought you, and sea-reaches.

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Rocca, fortress, hawk-heel,
lion-paw, clamped on a hill.

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A hill, no.

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On a sea cliff, and
crag-cocked, the embrasures

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commanding the
beaches range easy,

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with most fastidious
mathematical skill.

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Philipus me fecit-- he of
Spain, the black-browed,

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the anguished, for whom nothing
prospered, though he loved God.

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His arms, a great
scutcheon of stone,

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once over the drawbridge,
have languished now long

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in the moat under garbage.

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At the moat-brink,
rosemary with blue,

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thistle with gold bloom nod.

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Over the bay face, sun
blaze and cloud tatter.

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Now the sirocco, the dust swirl
is swirled over the bay face,

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mounts air like
gold gauze whirled.

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It traverses the
blaze-blue of water.

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We have brought you where
geometry of a military rigor

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survives its own ruined world,
and sun regilds your hair,

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in the midst of your laughter.

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Rosemary, thistle, clutch stone.

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Far hangs the
island in blue air.

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Far to that blueness
the heart aches.

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And on the exposed
approaches, the last gold

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of gorse blooms in
the sirocco, shakes.

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