WEBVTT

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The rest of our hour we'll
spend doing some passages

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from "Sandover."

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This very long poem is based on
communications with the Ouija

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board, over the Ouija board.

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For nearly 25 years
David Jackson and I

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held these seances whether
at home in Connecticut

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or in that house in Athens I
wrote about and after the fire.

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Using a handmade board
covered with alphabet,

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Arabic numerals, few
punctuation marks,

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and with an overturned
teacup for a pointer,

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we came to be in touch with
a whole universe whose voices

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ranged from those of dead
friends and strangers

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to fallen angels or
subatomic particles

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on to God, biology,
and his twin sister,

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to Queen of Heaven, also known
as Psyche or Nature or Chaos.

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In volume three of the trilogy,
our principal instructors

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are the four elemental angels.

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We have the archangel Michael,
the angel of light and air;

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Gabriel, angel of
fire or antimatter;

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Emmanuel, water;
Raphael, of Earth.

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These angels have earlier
described themselves

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as the senses of God.

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Michael would therefore
be the sight of God,

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Gabriel the taste, Emmanuel
the touch, Raphael the hearing.

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The sense of smell, along
with the very breath of life,

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is, as we will discover in
the passage you'll hear,

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the province of nature herself.

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There are furthermore
a bat who turns

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into a peacock and
a unicorn left over

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from the cataclysm
of Atlantis to whom

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we have given the name Unice.

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These two seem to personify
what the physicists call

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the weak and the strong force.

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I've had a unicorn in mind
since a poem from my very

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first book, a little sonnet
that I'll read to you.

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The unicorn here is much more
of a literary construction

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than Unice is in "Sandover,"
owing a good deal,

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I would say, to Rilke and to the
white stag in Flaubert's story

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about St. Julian.

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But here's the first
appearance of that motif.

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Hunters choke the golden
clearing with apertures:

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eye, nostril, ear, for there
candor prances, unicorn rare,

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whose hooves since dawn
was steering the whole hunt

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toward beatitude.

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Yet when to pouring
horns his captors,

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nearing the mound where
he should stand subdued,

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find once more the
shining puzzle they stalk

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is constantly disappearing
beyond the hounds and musket

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muzzles.

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How shall they think that,
fearing he might too blissfully

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amaze, the white stag leaps
unseen into their gaze,

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into their empty
horns, past hearing?

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