WEBVTT

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So this is my imitation of both
the Justice and the Vallejo,

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I guess.

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It's called "In Memory."

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"I'll die in Montreal
in the wake of winter.

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Outside my window,
gouts of snow will

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topple from the gaunt
branches of my favorite maple

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toward the dark street where
they will turn to water."

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Actually, I'm going to
start over for a second.

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There are two things
I want to mention.

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It refers at one
point to Outremont,

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you'll hear the word Outremont,
which might not make--

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mean anything to most of you.

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It's a neighborhood in Montreal
where my family and I usually

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spend a month in the summer.

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My wife is Canadian.

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And Durocher is the
street that we stay on

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and it's in the middle
of a major Hasidic Jewish

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neighborhood and that
figures in the poem.

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And I think that's all.

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So I'll start over.

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"I'll die in Montreal
in the wake of winter.

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Outside my window
gouts of snow will

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topple from the gaunt
branches of my favorite maple

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toward the dark street, where
they will turn to water.

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Gray little Alps
heaved by the snow

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plows, skyward,
after some storm will

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have begun declining exposing
like fossils the buried cars.

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Deep cleaning will
need to be done.

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A city will need to be scoured.

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I'll die in winter but
for now it is summer.

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The sidewalk chirps
with children.

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My grimly formal
next door neighbor

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in the broad shade
of his shtreimel

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is off to greet the Sabbath.

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He'd look no grimmer,
I'd wager, were he

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trudging to the gallows.

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I'll die some other Friday
in thawing weather thinking

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perhaps, as I am
now, of my father

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and his long loneliness
propped on thick pillows.

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I'll die as the
Hasidism who wear

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like blazon each different from
their neighbors who are sinful.

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Parade down Durocher
in black, not mournful,

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for what was I to them.

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Through all those seasons
they never did acknowledge me.

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Our manners clashed
like our clothing

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when we passed on sidewalks.

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They stared ahead.

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I smiled at wigs, at side locks.

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Yet let them figure, here
in these lines as mourners.

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Geoffrey Brock, a native
of Southern Climes

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has died in a cold country
far from his people.

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A minor poet known among
friends for his supple use

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of outmoded forms and
his quaint rhymes.

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He leaves a wife
and children who--

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and so on.

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And now he's gone from
Outremont forever.

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Don't bother praying
he was no believer

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and isn't bound for
any heaven or Zion.

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It's all the same to
him if you wed his widow

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and fill the vague depression
left in his mattress or flirted

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[INAUDIBLE] with his
favorite waitress.

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Soon even in memory he
will cast no shadow."

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