WEBVTT

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The schoolroom that
Unice guards is

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part of a grand
English manor house

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called Sandover, which is
the imaginary setting of most

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of this poem.

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The real settings are
of course the rooms

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in which the seances take place,
in this case, the entrance

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hall in Athens.

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The Sandover
schoolroom has reverted

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to a nursery in the
passage you'll hear next.

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The central character, the
occupant of the nursery,

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is our friend and neighbor
in Connecticut Robert

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Morse, who is about to be reborn
in Minnesota as a composer.

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The passage begins
when JM rejoins

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DJ in Greece, July 1978, just
a year after Robert's death.

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Peter Hooten will do
Unice, the four angels who

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bring their gifts to the
yet unborn child, and last

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of all nature while I do the
human voices, dead or alive.

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July 1978, noon Athens,
10 months later.

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JM's led in shock from
jet lag to the music room

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just off the hall, space
named for its upright tone

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deaf piano, not much used.

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DJ presses a switch.

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Out leaping from the gloom
four cream plaster columns

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catch the light, a
path through olives.

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There beyond the grove
a little beached skiff,

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an Arcadian cove, fresco.

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But who painted it?

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He did.

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Three weeks sandpaper,
just so turpentine,

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and look, beneath the
mildest of blue skies

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this ideal world lacks
only one or two dimensions

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for future mornings
blue in streaming alpha

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wave to realize.

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Yet from that house, a
stone's throw distant,

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years flew by and
the tall shadow of.

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No peep.

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The manor, is it empty?

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Or asleep?

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Robert surely walks the rank
parterres, works at the piano,

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leaps the hedge on horseback.

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Still, we hesitate to call.

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Could we face it if we found
the whole alive with voices,

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or my final page, every day
brought nearer, anything

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but final?

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Ah, these are by
now the risks one

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takes, remembering whose house
it is, their high connections

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and past kindnesses.

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Before we know it, our
halfhearted ring is answered.

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[HURRIED FOOTSTEPS]

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Sirs?

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As up dear Uni frisks,
followed by Robert.

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He's alone.

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We've come none too soon.

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He leaves next week for life.

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Details last summer unavailable
are rapidly sketched in.

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The Minnesota dairy farm.

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The sister, five
years old, obediently

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practicing her scales.

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Baby will need Divino
Mozartino from very start.

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Then the rich widower
for grandfather,

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our friend, the sole male heir.

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Cushy, no.

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Perfection, pure Jane Austen.

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Shrewd guest, DJ, plotting
just such arrangements

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on Earth for lab souls
is her V work here.

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One shaded villa
in a Bombay street

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has lately brought our
packed house to its feet.

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Remember meeting Robert?

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The question never
fails to prompt a smile.

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Who could forget?

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That was the year our Stonington
high school mistook itself

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for a summer theater.

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Old troopers doddering
up with crutch

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and creak out of the quick
climb into the limelight

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filled the undiscerning hall.

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One night a mummy, assoluta
of technique, precariously

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conjured points in air, abysses
yawning for the vivandière

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till rataplan!

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four gaily intertwined
cadets provoked this murmur

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from behind.

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It's everything one
loathes about the dance.

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We look around laughing and
there Robert sat with Isabel,

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knowing already that here was
one friendship never launched

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by chance.

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