WEBVTT

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I've written a lot of poems
called the Michael Morley

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poems, in the first book
and in the new book.

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And Stephen Paulus
sets them to music.

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It was done last February,
this time last year.

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And there are six poems.

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I want to read you two of them.

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It's a sequence called
"Mad Book, Shadow Book."

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And here are what the
two things are about.

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And the first one I'll read is
called "Root Song: Morley Goes

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Mad."

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And the root refers
to the root chakra.

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There are seven chakras in yoga.

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And the root chakra
is right down

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between 2 root
parts of your body.

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And that's where it is.

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And I'm meditating on that.

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And that's what that's
about, if that's helpful.

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And in the last part,
Morley is asleep

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but talking in his sleep.

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And the thing is
composed entirely

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of phrases from my dreams.

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I dreamed them and wrote them
down and put them together.

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They're not written
phrases, consciously.

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So it's Morley's "Root Song."

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And then the last section is
called "Et in Arcadia, Morley."

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And he's a kind of
crazy person, unlike me.

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When I'm crazy, I
become Michael Morley.

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But here's where he
really freaks out.

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This is about as weird as I get.

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So far.

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Morley's "Root Song"

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The cats keep bringing
birds into the house.

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Some I save.

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They are not fit for flight.

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They are no use for song.

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Bent birds, songs without words,
lost between wing and wing.

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The night, the rider
doing the dark roads.

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My root is rubble
and barbed wire.

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My root is not sweet.

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My root is army in the snow.

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Now in my mad book I do read.

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Now in my shadow book I do peer.

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All is clear as night to me.

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Every animal is sad.

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Sing nonny no.

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Sing, hey nonny, mamma mia,
Cosa Nostra, bossa nova.

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My root's a goat.

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My root is a cellar door.

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My root is bruise of jewels.

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The dreams I had when I was
a boy, I have forgotten,

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gone, dreaming, verboten,
going, going, gone.

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E pericoloso sporgersi.

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That means, by the
way, don't lean out

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the window on Italian trains.

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Naughty, naughty boy, I
have forgotten who I was.

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Rivers run through my rooms.

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My root is rust and red planet.

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My root's hot.

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My root is crossed swords.

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Now in my mad book I do write,
I am King Morley of the roads.

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Now in my shadow book,
I do slink and slip.

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I am the prince of
the sinking ship.

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Into the house,
the cats do creep.

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O, lady of the house of
sleep, every animal is sad.

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Sing nonny, neighborhood, no.

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Sing, hey nonny, mamma mia,
Cosa Nostra, bossa nova.

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My root is nonny.

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My root is no, no,
no, no, no, no.

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Here are some people to see you.

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Good evening, Doctor Solstice.

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Nurse Equinox,
bonsoir, come on in.

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There is a serpent
asleep on the sofa.

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There is an eagle asleep in me.

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A thousand dogs are
on watch for me.

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A hundred planes
take off without me.

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I have been warned
by a man in a mirror.

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Je suis Michel de la Mort.

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Pericoloso, pericoloso, ich habe genug.

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Rivers run through my rooms,
mamma mia, Cosa Nostra,

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bossa nova.

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My root is tundra.

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My root is wriggle
of padlock and plank.

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My root is ladders and lizards.

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Now in their mad
arms they do hold me.

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Now in their shadow
arms I do sink.

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Corporal Morley,
fall in, fall in.

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The cats keep bringing wings.

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Every sad street without words.

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Nurse, nurse, queen, acorn, oh.

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And this little Morley
went whee, mama, whee,

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root tooty toot.

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Whee, all the way, drum.

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And the last bit, that
wasn't when he was asleep,

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though you may have thought it.

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These are the dream phrases
and the repeated phrases,

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like a mantra to calm
him down in his sleep.

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"Et in Arcadia, Morley"

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The annual Swedish Association
for the Refusal of a Hotel

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requests the pleasure
of Mr. Morley's pumpkin

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to wrinkle the princess.

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The islands between
here and birth.

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AA Dariero Hudson crossed
the river in a spoon.

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You can't drag a horse
uphill during an opera.

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Your poems are wigs.

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The islands between
here and birth.

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The peacocks bloom the
islands and plant their cries.

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The islands, or fire,
the islands, the islands

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between here and birth.

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The islands.

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