WEBVTT

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This poem is about
my mother, and it's

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based on the motherly advice,
which maybe some of you

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still remember.

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I don't know whether
modern mothers still

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have this advice that
you should never sleep

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with flowers in your room.

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Always take out
flowers from bedrooms.

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And even in hospitals,
the nurses in the evening

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rush to get out all the flowers.

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I always think, what do they
do with all these flowers now?

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But, anyhow, it has
some scientific reason

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with oxygen and nitrogen
and something like that.

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But no one has ever died
of a death of flowers.

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And so I think this
advice-- and, actually,

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it's very funny
that all of us keep

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these kinds of almost silly
or foolish advice, or anyhow

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very unimportant advice,
with us and the real advice

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we never take with us
because we don't do it.

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So I think mothers and
fathers have long given up

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to have this advice,
and they just

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limit themselves to this kind
of almost ridiculous advice.

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And these stay with us.

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That's the strange thing.

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I remember in World War Two
in the Jewish brigade group,

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we had a song in Hebrew, which
a mother or sending a letter

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to her son, and it went that--

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if you go to attack
the enemy, never

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forget to wear a sweater, which,
again, is one of these advices.

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But if you come to
think of it-- and it

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was meant to be funny
because soldiers

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want to overcome the
deep fear, so they

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make fun of all these things.

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But, actually, I think
this advice is just

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a kind of representative of the
real thing she wanted to say.

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Actually, this mother wanted
to say, don't go to war at all,

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and if you see the enemy,
run as fast as you can.

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But she knows it won't help.

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So it's actually this advice
which we carry around with us.

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"My mother once told me not to
sleep with flowers in the room.

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Since then, I have not
slept with flowers.

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I sleep alone without them.

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There were many flowers, but
I've never had enough time,

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and the persons I love are
already pushing themselves away

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from my life like boats
away from the shore.

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My mother said not to
sleep with flowers.

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You won't sleep.

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You won't sleep,
mother of my childhood.

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The banister I clung to when
they dragged me off to school

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is long since burned,
but my hands clinging

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remain clinging."

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