WEBVTT

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There's some poems
I want to read out

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of the book that followed
that one called the "Lice."

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The title of which
since no one seems

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content to let it just
pass at that, I hope

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is particularly
applicable to that book.

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It probably is applicable
to most books of poems.

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And it comes from a fragment
of Heraclides, this fragment.

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All men are deceived by
the appearances of things.

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Even Homer himself who was
the wisest man in Greece.

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But he was deceived
by boys catching lice.

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They said to him,
"what we have caught

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and what we have killed
we have left behind,

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but what has escaped
us we bring with us."

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The first column I want
to read from the lice

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is one called the child.

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Sometimes it is inconceivable
that I should be the age I am.

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Almost always it is at a
dry point in the afternoon.

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I cannot remember
what I am waiting

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for and in my astonishment,
I can hear the blood crawling

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over the planes hurrying
on to arrive before dark.

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I try to remember my
faults to make sure.

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One after the other, but
it is never a satisfactory

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the list is never complete.

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At times night occurs
to me so that I think

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I have been struck from behind.

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I remain perfectly still
feigning death listening

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for the assailant.

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Perhaps at last I even sleep a
little, for later I have moved.

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I opened my eyes,
the lantern fish

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have gone home in darkness.

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On all sides the
silence is unharmed.

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I remember, but
I feel no bruise.

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Then there are the
stories, and after a while

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I think something
else must connect them

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besides justice me.

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I regard myself
starting the search,

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turning corners, and
remembered metropolis.

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I passed skin's
withering and gardens

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that I see now are
not familiar, and I

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have lost even the
thread I thought I had.

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If I could be consistent
even in destitution,

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the world would be revealed.

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While I can, I try to
repeat what I believe,

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creatures, spirits--

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not this posture.

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I do not believe in knowledge
as we know it, but I forget.

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This silence coming at intervals
out of the shell of names,

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it must be all one person
really coming at different hours

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for the same thing.

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If I could learn
the word for yes,

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it could teach me questions.

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I would see that it
was itself every time

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and I would remember to
say take it up like a hand,

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and go with it.

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This is at last, yourself,
the child that will lead you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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