WEBVTT

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How many requests
for the last poem?

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This side.

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I'm up for grabs.

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Alison knows.

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So much stuff.

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I should choose that.

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OK.

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All right.

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That's what I'll do.

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Last poems are so important.

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All right.

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Well, I'm thinking
of the last poem,

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I'll read you a short poem here.

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This is a poem that comes from
my curiosity about the Hindu

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tradition of assigning to
the Godhead, God, divine

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intelligence.

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Both fatherly and
motherly attributes.

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That is in the
motherly attribute

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it's the divine mother.

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And Heavenly Father.

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And in our
Judeo-Christian thing we

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have this very stern, you
know, patriarchal image of God.

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And I've always-- I was
in India some years ago

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and I was very moved
by how that affects

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a culture, having that two
faceted idea of the divine.

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And this is a poem about that.

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It's called "A Hymn to Her."

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Like some swollen swaying
samba under pressure to behave,

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you are wild and without number,
neither principal nor wave.

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Can your dance
subdue its dancers

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when we dancers are the song?

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Can your slow half
whispered dancers

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float us back where we belong?

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Everything we long or ache
for is within soothing reach.

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It seems you surround us
with your wakefulness.

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You astound us in your dreams.

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The guy that translates
my work into Italian put--

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I was in Italy in February
and he put a tape in my bag

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and he's a musician also and
he actually put music to that.

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And see if I can take
it out and get a hit.

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Get somebody to record it.

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