WEBVTT

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This is called "What
Good Does It Do You?"

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And as I was trying to figure
out what to read tonight,

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I got a recorded message
from my daughter's school

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saying that because--

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she's in grade school, but the
high school had a lockdown.

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And I've gotten-- it's
not the first time I've

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gotten this message
where there's a lockdown,

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because there was a lockdown,
her school had a lockout.

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No one could go in and
no one could go out.

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And any of you who have
school age children

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know they do these practice
drills for lockdowns regularly.

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And so I was thinking about
that when I wrote this poem.

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And because this happened
today, I thought I'd read it.

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I've also been thinking--

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I was also thinking
when I was writing

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this poem about the separation
of families of asylum seekers

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who come to this country.

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So I thought I would read this.

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"What Good Does It Do You?"

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No corner more conspicuous
than the one children are

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asked to huddle in for
their own protection,

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it's a drill for when the bad
men come looking for them,

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your daughter explains.

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Already she's identified
who's most likely to ruin it

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for everyone by cracking
a joke or crying

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and the virtue of compliance.

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I'm very still,
Mama, very quiet.

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Taught at a young age to
side with the person who'd

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keep her alive, your
mother pressed herself

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against the fence of
the enemy encampment

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and asked a soldier for bread.

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She was six, seven.

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The soldier slipped it through.

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And so she returned every day.

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And when he'd see her coming
down the road, he'd say,

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here comes my girlfriend.

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Hunger's courting of
pity, pity's dalliance.

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Maybe there was no
fence, no clear division,

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as so often happens in civil
war and in this retelling.

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Your daughter brings home a
book of poems and pictures

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her class put together.

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In it there is part
heroism, part ache and rhyme

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and relations.

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No fire and ice, but
lockdown and immigration.

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Before fighter
planes were deployed

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to eclipse the sun of
every child's drawing,

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your mother as a girl
dreamed them dropping bombs

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on her house.

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It's not that her mother
didn't believe her.

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It's that the ground was too
hard, the basket too heavy,

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the husband so far away.

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Your mother never
forgot the dream

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that once she was an oracle.

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But what good did it do her when
grownups went on with business

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as usual?

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