WEBVTT

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And now I will
read some fragments

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from second part of book, from
"This Door is Not an Exit."

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"In one of those
parking lots in McLean

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I wait for her to
finish shopping.

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She comes across
the lot clutching

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a paper bag, the birds flying
up to the trees in front of her.

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Now she settles into
the seat slowly,

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putting the umbrella in her lap
like treasure with no desire

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to free herself of its burden.

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I look at her in the
way she moves, dwelling

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on the first signs of fatigue.

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And for a second I feel
like that umbrella,

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and all the rain in
it bears the blame

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for all the unfulfilled
dream of youth.

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In the garden of a
restaurant, a reddish

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colored cat stares at tiny
creatures in the leaves.

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Everything is so natural,
that is, familiar.

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We sit around the
cast-iron table

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right like a real
family on an outing,

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and I think of my father.

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He was a miner in a coal mine.

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And I think of my
father's father

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who was a miner in a salt mine.

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I think of a black
and white family photo

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from a time that makes me
feel something like sorrow

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and not sorrow.

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Something from the
glint of whose eyes

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only massive solar
panels could make

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migrate into the
language of poetry.

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Desolate February morning.

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I stumble upon
myself in the room.

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The phone isn't
ringing nor do I have

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anything to tell the world.

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I look at the
painting on the wall.

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My portrait done by a
painter from Sarajevo

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with a new address and
a Canadian citizenship.

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I went out into the world
to rest the body alarm

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and the fear of disappearing.

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But courage left me
at the first gloom.

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Now, I'm in the
middle or at the end,

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it's all the same,
of a life that

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wasn't even indispensable."

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Sorry.

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