WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.840 --> 00:00:07.370 align:middle line:84% This is one called "Sarajevo Moonlight." 00:00:07.370 --> 00:00:10.010 align:middle line:84% Looking over my shoulder at you this morning, 00:00:10.010 --> 00:00:12.530 align:middle line:84% I'm listening to the tender baritone 00:00:12.530 --> 00:00:17.780 align:middle line:84% voice of Radovan Karadzic in the little church of St. 00:00:17.780 --> 00:00:20.720 align:middle line:90% Michael, the apostle. 00:00:20.720 --> 00:00:23.060 align:middle line:90% Radovan is telling us-- 00:00:23.060 --> 00:00:27.290 align:middle line:84% us being myself and the poet Susan Ludvigson, 00:00:27.290 --> 00:00:31.580 align:middle line:84% is telling us what a sweet lovable place this family church 00:00:31.580 --> 00:00:37.800 align:middle line:84% of his is and how the light of history has shone on it twice. 00:00:37.800 --> 00:00:41.030 align:middle line:84% He narrates how St. Michael's was burned to the ground 00:00:41.030 --> 00:00:42.230 align:middle line:90% and how the sultans-- 00:00:42.230 --> 00:00:45.650 align:middle line:84% with the sultan's permission it was rebuilt. 00:00:45.650 --> 00:00:49.130 align:middle line:84% The catch was that it couldn't exceed its previous breath 00:00:49.130 --> 00:00:51.050 align:middle line:90% or height. 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:54.620 align:middle line:84% The heights of nights I measure by your presence 00:00:54.620 --> 00:00:56.450 align:middle line:90% are incalculable. 00:00:56.450 --> 00:01:00.920 align:middle line:84% A gift of light so precious that the only way to weigh it 00:01:00.920 --> 00:01:08.160 align:middle line:84% would be to shine on the scales of fishes in the sea. 00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:12.720 align:middle line:84% The deepening blueness of your eyes in this Islamicized 00:01:12.720 --> 00:01:18.000 align:middle line:84% town of such cold weather breeds a frosty ring 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:22.500 align:middle line:90% around my icy view of you. 00:01:22.500 --> 00:01:28.230 align:middle line:84% Now, our host as Fulbright poets for that 00:01:28.230 --> 00:01:35.280 align:middle line:84% what eight or nine days in Sarajevo was Radovan Karadzic. 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:39.300 align:middle line:84% And this is the same man who coined the phrase 00:01:39.300 --> 00:01:45.720 align:middle line:84% ethnic cleansing, and who is the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, 00:01:45.720 --> 00:01:51.330 align:middle line:90% and who is a war criminal. 00:01:51.330 --> 00:01:54.100 align:middle line:90% He's also a wonderful poet. 00:01:54.100 --> 00:01:54.990 align:middle line:90% He's a doctor. 00:01:54.990 --> 00:01:58.440 align:middle line:84% I watched him one afternoon at a luncheon, 00:01:58.440 --> 00:02:01.020 align:middle line:84% somebody had a heart attack, some man fell out before 00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:03.600 align:middle line:84% and he went over, excused himself, 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:05.790 align:middle line:90% he was reading us his poetry. 00:02:05.790 --> 00:02:08.250 align:middle line:84% Administered mouth to mouth resuscitation 00:02:08.250 --> 00:02:13.290 align:middle line:84% and checked the man out, called an ambulance, all of this. 00:02:13.290 --> 00:02:17.100 align:middle line:84% And he was taking us around in this instance, 00:02:17.100 --> 00:02:21.480 align:middle line:84% telling us about his family church, St. Michael's. 00:02:21.480 --> 00:02:25.560 align:middle line:84% And I remember asking him about the Ali Pasha 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:29.830 align:middle line:84% mosque, which was virtually right across the street. 00:02:29.830 --> 00:02:34.610 align:middle line:84% And he looked at me and he said, mosque, 00:02:34.610 --> 00:02:37.970 align:middle line:84% I am not knowing so many things about mosques, 00:02:37.970 --> 00:02:42.810 align:middle line:84% but there are books I can refer you to. 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:49.370 align:middle line:84% So when somebody does something crazy and you think back always 00:02:49.370 --> 00:02:52.220 align:middle line:84% your brain goes back through everything about them. 00:02:52.220 --> 00:02:53.810 align:middle line:84% And that was the only hint that I 00:02:53.810 --> 00:02:57.680 align:middle line:84% had that this horror would develop later 00:02:57.680 --> 00:02:59.720 align:middle line:84% under his leadership in which they 00:02:59.720 --> 00:03:06.620 align:middle line:84% tried their best to wipe out all of the Muslims 00:03:06.620 --> 00:03:07.970 align:middle line:90% in Sarajevo, Bosnia. 00:03:07.970 --> 00:03:10.510 align:middle line:90% 00:03:10.510 --> 00:03:14.110 align:middle line:84% All autumn, he was reading a poem that he translated, 00:03:14.110 --> 00:03:15.190 align:middle line:90% all autumn. 00:03:15.190 --> 00:03:20.910 align:middle line:84% I said, what does this mean, all autumn? 00:03:20.910 --> 00:03:29.610 align:middle line:84% Is all autumn is one day when is all autumn-- 00:03:29.610 --> 00:03:39.650 align:middle line:84% one day before is winter, it is summer in autumn. 00:03:39.650 --> 00:03:47.060 align:middle line:84% One day, later, there is winter but one day 00:03:47.060 --> 00:03:51.270 align:middle line:84% is all autumn, no summer, no winter. 00:03:51.270 --> 00:03:55.280 align:middle line:84% I understood what he was talking about. 00:03:55.280 --> 00:03:59.150 align:middle line:84% I only share this with you just to say that we've grown up 00:03:59.150 --> 00:04:07.310 align:middle line:84% in this horrible in many ways 20th century in which carnage 00:04:07.310 --> 00:04:09.350 align:middle line:90% has been monumental. 00:04:09.350 --> 00:04:12.560 align:middle line:84% And we see the documents-- documentaries 00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:14.720 align:middle line:84% on the History Channel, we read the history books 00:04:14.720 --> 00:04:17.450 align:middle line:84% the Holocaust, the dreadful things 00:04:17.450 --> 00:04:22.560 align:middle line:84% that went on that go on in Somalia, and Zaire, and Bosnia, 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:26.030 align:middle line:84% and just about everywhere around the globe these days. 00:04:26.030 --> 00:04:28.520 align:middle line:84% And we like to think that that's not us, 00:04:28.520 --> 00:04:34.660 align:middle line:84% that-- that's somebody else doing that we're not 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:37.840 align:middle line:84% separate from the people that are doing that is we're 00:04:37.840 --> 00:04:42.880 align:middle line:84% all interconnected so intimately that I think that 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:44.780 align:middle line:84% in the beginnings of the next century, 00:04:44.780 --> 00:04:49.720 align:middle line:84% particularly the younger ones, who are here in the audience. 00:04:49.720 --> 00:04:52.930 align:middle line:84% I think they will have to be a dialogue escalated to a higher 00:04:52.930 --> 00:04:58.420 align:middle line:84% level of trying to understand these qualities in human beings, 00:04:58.420 --> 00:05:01.880 align:middle line:84% we are angels and demons simultaneously. 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:06.220 align:middle line:84% And we have to take the responsibility for both. 00:05:06.220 --> 00:05:08.200 align:middle line:84% That's the end of my little Unitarian lecture. 00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:11.130 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:05:11.130 --> 00:05:13.500 align:middle line:90% I had to say all that. 00:05:13.500 --> 00:05:14.000 align:middle line:90%