WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:02.745 align:middle line:90% This is a love of language. 00:00:02.745 --> 00:00:07.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.990 --> 00:00:10.720 align:middle line:90% For all poets, Pound says-- 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:14.290 align:middle line:84% Ezra Pound-- says that the poet is the keeper 00:00:14.290 --> 00:00:15.625 align:middle line:90% of the language of the tribe. 00:00:15.625 --> 00:00:18.460 align:middle line:90% 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:23.530 align:middle line:84% And yet language is so imperfect. 00:00:23.530 --> 00:00:27.240 align:middle line:90% 00:00:27.240 --> 00:00:32.330 align:middle line:84% There's a mention in this poem about the Sumerian tablets, 00:00:32.330 --> 00:00:38.930 align:middle line:84% which many of you will know were discovered in Sumeria 00:00:38.930 --> 00:00:43.970 align:middle line:84% by the thousands-- heaps, mounds of them. 00:00:43.970 --> 00:00:49.800 align:middle line:84% And the scholars were excited because it 00:00:49.800 --> 00:00:53.670 align:middle line:84% was the oldest records we really have of the past, 00:00:53.670 --> 00:00:55.650 align:middle line:90% if we could just translate them. 00:00:55.650 --> 00:00:58.220 align:middle line:90% 00:00:58.220 --> 00:01:03.030 align:middle line:84% But for a long time, they couldn't translate them. 00:01:03.030 --> 00:01:05.265 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart." 00:01:05.265 --> 00:01:08.750 align:middle line:90% 00:01:08.750 --> 00:01:11.870 align:middle line:84% "How astonishing it is that language 00:01:11.870 --> 00:01:17.465 align:middle line:84% can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. 00:01:17.465 --> 00:01:20.480 align:middle line:90% 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:27.530 align:middle line:84% Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, 00:01:27.530 --> 00:01:33.290 align:middle line:84% we write, and the words get it wrong. 00:01:33.290 --> 00:01:38.750 align:middle line:84% We say bread and it means according to which nation. 00:01:38.750 --> 00:01:42.350 align:middle line:84% French has no word for home, and we have 00:01:42.350 --> 00:01:46.670 align:middle line:90% no word for strict pleasure. 00:01:46.670 --> 00:01:50.240 align:middle line:84% A people in northern India is dying out 00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:56.780 align:middle line:84% because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. 00:01:56.780 --> 00:01:59.900 align:middle line:84% I dream of lost vocabularies that 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:03.350 align:middle line:84% might express some of what we no longer can express. 00:02:03.350 --> 00:02:05.900 align:middle line:90% 00:02:05.900 --> 00:02:09.289 align:middle line:84% Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally 00:02:09.289 --> 00:02:16.220 align:middle line:84% explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. 00:02:16.220 --> 00:02:18.770 align:middle line:90% And maybe not. 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:22.340 align:middle line:84% When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets 00:02:22.340 --> 00:02:26.585 align:middle line:84% were translated, they seemed to be business records. 00:02:26.585 --> 00:02:29.490 align:middle line:90% 00:02:29.490 --> 00:02:32.870 align:middle line:84% But what if they are poems or psalms? 00:02:32.870 --> 00:02:35.420 align:middle line:90% 00:02:35.420 --> 00:02:42.440 align:middle line:84% My joy is the same as 12 Ethiopian goats standing 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:47.000 align:middle line:90% silent in the morning light. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:52.130 align:middle line:84% O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, 00:02:52.130 --> 00:02:57.410 align:middle line:84% as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. 00:02:57.410 --> 00:03:01.120 align:middle line:90% 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:04.780 align:middle line:84% Her breasts are six white oxen loaded 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:10.480 align:middle line:84% with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. 00:03:10.480 --> 00:03:15.760 align:middle line:84% My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:23.290 align:middle line:84% Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. 00:03:23.290 --> 00:03:26.410 align:middle line:84% Giraffes are this desire in the dark. 00:03:26.410 --> 00:03:29.340 align:middle line:90% 00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:37.200 align:middle line:84% Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not a language but a map. 00:03:37.200 --> 00:03:45.990 align:middle line:84% What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, 00:03:45.990 --> 00:03:48.290 align:middle line:90% horses, and birds." 00:03:48.290 --> 00:03:49.068 align:middle line:90%