WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:04.360 align:middle line:84% It will be over in just a few moments. 00:00:04.360 --> 00:00:06.690 align:middle line:84% But I have one last thing to read to you. 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:12.150 align:middle line:84% A self-contained lyric from Sandover, called Samos. 00:00:12.150 --> 00:00:14.460 align:middle line:90% The form here is interesting. 00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:19.410 align:middle line:84% It's a form that Auden found among the lyrics of Dante. 00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:26.220 align:middle line:84% It's like a tripled, or doubled, or squared sestina. 00:00:26.220 --> 00:00:31.920 align:middle line:84% Five stanzas, 12 lines each, an envoy of five lines, 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:34.360 align:middle line:84% and only five end words throughout, 00:00:34.360 --> 00:00:36.810 align:middle line:90% which recur at a fixed pattern. 00:00:36.810 --> 00:00:39.480 align:middle line:84% Auden called it a canzone as did Dante, 00:00:39.480 --> 00:00:41.940 align:middle line:84% but there are, of course, many different forms 00:00:41.940 --> 00:00:46.710 align:middle line:84% under that definition in Dante's period. 00:00:46.710 --> 00:00:52.010 align:middle line:84% The numbers 5 and 12 are rather crucial to the poem in ways 00:00:52.010 --> 00:00:55.530 align:middle line:84% I won't need to explain, but that's 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:58.020 align:middle line:90% the reason I picked the form. 00:00:58.020 --> 00:01:01.380 align:middle line:84% It describes a school break, an excursion 00:01:01.380 --> 00:01:02.490 align:middle line:90% to the island of Samos. 00:01:02.490 --> 00:01:05.040 align:middle line:90% 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:08.310 align:middle line:84% And still, at sea or night, we had a sense of sunrise, 00:01:08.310 --> 00:01:12.690 align:middle line:84% golden oil poured upon water, soothing its heave, 00:01:12.690 --> 00:01:16.380 align:middle line:84% letting the sleeper sense what inborn amniotic homing 00:01:16.380 --> 00:01:19.710 align:middle line:84% sense was ferrying him now through the dream 00:01:19.710 --> 00:01:24.090 align:middle line:84% fire in which (it has been felt) each human sense burns, now 00:01:24.090 --> 00:01:28.800 align:middle line:84% through ship's radar's cool sixth sense or mere unerring 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:31.260 align:middle line:90% starlight to an island. 00:01:31.260 --> 00:01:32.790 align:middle line:90% Here we were. 00:01:32.790 --> 00:01:36.240 align:middle line:84% The twins of sea and land up and about for hours. 00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:40.590 align:middle line:84% Hues, cries, scents had placed at eye level 00:01:40.590 --> 00:01:43.680 align:middle line:84% a single light croissant, the harbor 00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:48.000 align:middle line:90% glazed with warm pink light. 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.740 align:middle line:84% Fire-wisps were weaving a string bag of light for sea stones. 00:01:52.740 --> 00:01:54.860 align:middle line:90% Their astounding color sense. 00:01:54.860 --> 00:01:58.440 align:middle line:84% Porphyry, alabaster, chrysolite translucences 00:01:58.440 --> 00:02:01.650 align:middle line:84% that go dead in daylight asked only the quick dip 00:02:01.650 --> 00:02:06.120 align:middle line:84% in holy water for the saint of cell on cell to come alight-- 00:02:06.120 --> 00:02:10.139 align:middle line:84% illuminated crystals thinking light, refracting it, 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:14.190 align:middle line:84% the gray prismatic fire or yellow-gray of sea's 00:02:14.190 --> 00:02:16.590 align:middle line:90% dilute sapphire. 00:02:16.590 --> 00:02:20.580 align:middle line:84% Wavelengths daily deeply score the leit-motifs 00:02:20.580 --> 00:02:24.180 align:middle line:84% of loom and wheel upon this land. 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:28.230 align:middle line:84% To those who listen, it's the promised land. 00:02:28.230 --> 00:02:29.790 align:middle line:90% A little spin today? 00:02:29.790 --> 00:02:32.280 align:middle line:84% Dirt roads inland jounce and revolve 00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:36.120 align:middle line:84% in a nerve-jangling light, doing the ancient dances of the land 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:38.580 align:middle line:84% where gnarled as olive trees that 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:41.730 align:middle line:84% shag the land with silver, old men-- 00:02:41.730 --> 00:02:45.300 align:middle line:84% their two-bladed sense of spendthrift poverty 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:46.110 align:middle line:90% the very land. 00:02:46.110 --> 00:02:48.270 align:middle line:90% Being, if not loaf, tomb-- 00:02:48.270 --> 00:02:51.780 align:middle line:84% superbly land-- upright on the downbeat. 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:55.200 align:middle line:84% We who water the local wine, which drinks itself 00:02:55.200 --> 00:02:58.050 align:middle line:84% like water, clap for more, cry out 00:02:58.050 --> 00:03:02.820 align:middle line:84% to be this island licked all over by a white, salt fire, 00:03:02.820 --> 00:03:06.780 align:middle line:84% be noon's pulsing ember raked by fire 00:03:06.780 --> 00:03:11.250 align:middle line:84% know nothing now but Earth, air, water, fire. 00:03:11.250 --> 00:03:13.680 align:middle line:84% For once out of the frying pan to land 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:17.310 align:middle line:84% within their timeless, everlasting fire. 00:03:17.310 --> 00:03:20.880 align:middle line:84% Blood's least red monocle, o magnifier 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:23.610 align:middle line:84% of the great eye that sees by its own light 00:03:23.610 --> 00:03:26.880 align:middle line:84% more pictures in the world's enchanted fire 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:30.990 align:middle line:84% than come and go in any shrewd crossfire upon the page 00:03:30.990 --> 00:03:32.910 align:middle line:90% of syllable and sense. 00:03:32.910 --> 00:03:36.840 align:middle line:84% We want unwilled excursions and ascents, 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:40.380 align:middle line:84% crave the upward-rippling rungs of fire. 00:03:40.380 --> 00:03:43.110 align:middle line:84% The outward-rippling rings-- enough-- 00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:44.250 align:middle line:90% of water. 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:48.870 align:middle line:84% Now some details, how else will this hold water? 00:03:48.870 --> 00:03:52.440 align:middle line:84% Our room's three flights above the whitewashed waterfront 00:03:52.440 --> 00:03:54.840 align:middle line:90% where Pythagoras was born. 00:03:54.840 --> 00:03:59.160 align:middle line:84% A fire escape of sky-blue iron leads down to water. 00:03:59.160 --> 00:04:03.240 align:middle line:84% Yachts creak on mirror berths, and overwater voices 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:06.900 align:middle line:84% from Sweden or Somalialand tell how this or that one 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:09.870 align:middle line:84% crossed the water to Ephesus, came back 00:04:09.870 --> 00:04:15.210 align:middle line:84% with toilet water and a two kilo box of Turkish delight-- 00:04:15.210 --> 00:04:17.070 align:middle line:90% trifles. 00:04:17.070 --> 00:04:20.820 align:middle line:84% Yet they shine with such pure light in memory, even they, 00:04:20.820 --> 00:04:23.190 align:middle line:90% that the eyes water. 00:04:23.190 --> 00:04:26.430 align:middle line:84% As with the setting sun or innocence, 00:04:26.430 --> 00:04:30.010 align:middle line:84% do things that fade especially make sense? 00:04:30.010 --> 00:04:31.380 align:middle line:90% Samos. 00:04:31.380 --> 00:04:34.680 align:middle line:84% We keep trying to make sense of what we can. 00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:36.840 align:middle line:90% Not souls of the first water-- 00:04:36.840 --> 00:04:41.010 align:middle line:84% although we've put on airs and taken fire-- 00:04:41.010 --> 00:04:43.830 align:middle line:84% we shall be dust of quite another land 00:04:43.830 --> 00:04:49.320 align:middle line:84% before the seeds here planted come to light. 00:04:49.320 --> 00:04:52.670 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:52.670 --> 00:05:12.000 align:middle line:90%