WEBVTT

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So--

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[APPLAUSE]

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--this next poem is
among these new poems

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that seem to have come with
the long lens of a long life.

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If you know as much history
as I'd like to forget--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--join me now in watching on a
high battlement of an unnamed

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castle what happens
when, as the title says,

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"A Petal Hangs in
the Late Winter Air."

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As if a Zen poet, his
sandals rough with wear

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Had entered a foreign poem

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One with an epic
shape, battlement walls

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An argument to make

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A history to record

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And the poet, looking up
from the parchment on which

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heroic sagas were unfolding

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Had become transfixed
by a single petal

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Pink and silken on a moment's
breath in the late winter air

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And as he gazed,

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It was as if the moment
opened to a memory of ocean

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Of dunes overgrown
with wild roses

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Pink blossoms alive
with the hum of bees

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Drawn by the wide
open offer of pollen

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And he transfixed

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Dropping his pen

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Forgetting the epic
events he had meant

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to turn into glorious rhyme

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He reached out his hand

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For the petal poised
on the wintry air

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He caught its silk in
the cup of his palm

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And with a single
breath, he blew it away

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Into the vacancy of air
at the parapet's edge

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And leaning over the ledge

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He watched it slowly disappear

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Into all that emptiness

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Then, taking up
the parchment that

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carried the blood-soaked epic
he had meant to turn into song

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He tore it into the finest bits

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He let the huge air take it

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And turn it to a
shimmer of sparks

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A flurry of bright
dust in the sunlight

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As if history had
found its true shape

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[APPLAUSE]

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Yeah.

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