WEBVTT

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This is the "Paschal
Lamb," and this

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was when the prose poem
form was starting to get

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a little bit out of control.

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"Well, David said.

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It was snowing
outside and his voice

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contained many
registers of anger,

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disgust, and wounded justice.

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I think it's fucking crazy.

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I'm not going to be
a sacrificial lamb.

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In Greece sometimes,
when she walked

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in the road above the
sea back to her house

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from the little village in
the dark, a friend told me,

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and the sky seemed immense,
the moon terribly bright,

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it made her wonder if
her life were a fit gift.

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And there is that poor
heifer in the poem

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by Keats, all decked out in
ribbons and flowers, no terror

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in the eyes, no uncontrollable
slobber of mucus at the muzzle,

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since she doesn't
understand the festivities.

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And David after he quit
academic life, actually

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bought a ranch in Kentucky near
a town named Pleasureville,

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and began to raise sheep.

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When we visited that
summer and the night

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was shrill with crickets
and the heat did not let up,

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we sat for a long
time after dinner

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and he told again the story
about his first teaching

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job and the vice president.

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When he bought the place, he
continued his subscriptions

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to The Guardian and
the Workers Vanguard,

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but they piled up
in a corner unread.

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He had a mortgage to pay.

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He didn't know anything about
raising animals for slaughter,

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and so he read The
American Sheepman

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with an intensity he said he
had never even approximated

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when he was reading political
theory for his PhD orals.

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The vice president
of the United States,

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after his term in office,
accepted a position

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as lecturer in political
science at a small college

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in his home district,
where David had just

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taken his first job.

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The dean brought Hubert
Humphrey around to introduce him

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to the faculty.

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When they came to
David's office,

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the vice president, expensively
dressed, immensely hardy,

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extended his hand
and David did not

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feel he could take it
because he believed

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the man was a war criminal.

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And not knowing any other
way to avoid the awkwardness,

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he said so, which was the
beginning of his losing the job

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at that college.

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But that was the dean's doing.

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The vice president
started to cry.

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He had the hurt
look in his eyes,

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David said, of the kicked dog
with a long unblemished record

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of loyalty and affection, this
man who had publicly defended,

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had praised, the terror bombing
of villages full of peasants.

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He seemed to David unimaginably
empty of inner life

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if he could be hurt rather than
affronted by a young man making

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a stiffly moral gesture in front
of two men his father's age.

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David said he didn't like
the fact that he did it,

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but that he had never looked
at another human being

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with such icy
wondering detachment.

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And so in the high ceiling
kitchen, the air drenched

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with the odor of clover,
we remembered Vic Doyno

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in the snow in Buffalo, in
the days when the war went on

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continuously like a nightmare in
our waking and sleeping hours.

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Vic had come to work
flushed with excitement

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at an idea he had had in
the middle of the night.

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He had figured out
how to end the war.

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It was a simple plan.

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Everyone in the country--

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in the world, certainly a
lot of Swedish and English

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students would go along--

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who was opposed to
the war would simply

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cut off the little
finger on the left hand

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and send it to the president.

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Imagine!

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They would arrive slowly at
first, the act of two or three

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maniacs, but the news
would hit the papers

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and the next day there
would be a few more.

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And the day after that more.

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And on the fourth day
there would be thousands.

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And on the fifth day,
clinics would be set up--

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organized by medical students
in Madison, San Francisco,

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Stockholm, Paris--

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to deal with the
surgical procedure safely

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and on a massive scale.

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And on the sixth day,
the war would stop.

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It would stop.

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And the day after that,
the helicopters at Bienhoa

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would sit on the
airfields in silence

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like squads of
disciplined mosquitoes.

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And peasants,
worried and curious

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because peasants are
always worried and curious,

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would stare up at the
silence of an unfamiliar blue

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cirrus-drifted sky.

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In years later, we
would know each other

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by those missing fingers.

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An aging Japanese businessman
minus a little finger

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on his left hand would notice
the similarly mutilated hand

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of his cab driver
in Chicago, and they

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would exchange a fleeting
unspoken nod of fellowship.

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And it could happen.

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All we had to do to make it
happen, David, Vic had said,

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while the water for tea
hissed on the hot plate

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in David's chilly office and the
snow came down thick as cotton

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batting, was cut off the little
fingers on our hands right now,

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take them to the
department secretary,

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and have her put
them in the mail."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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