WEBVTT

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I think I'll read one or two.

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Well, here's another poem
touching about the same thing.

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These are very sad poems because
something sad is happening

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in the United States and no one
knows when it's going to end.

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But some of it is not the
fault of the United States,

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some of it is just
the fault of being

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an industrialized country.

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We are the leader of the
world in that respect.

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When you go to Europe,
you see it very closely.

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The European poets have
nothing to write about

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because they're at the edge.

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We're at the center,
things are happening to us

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more horrible than they
are happening to any

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of the European countries.

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So they aren't as
happy as we are.

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Anyway, there is a happiness
of being at the center of what

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is going on, even if it's bad.

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And we didn't used
to be at the center.

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Australia is not at the
center now, but we are.

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So we suffer things
that other people are

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going to suffer in 100 years.

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And one of the things that we
suffer in an industrialized

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society is that we have to
feed people into the machine

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all the time.

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When you think of the comparison
between industrial America

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and industrial nations,
and the old times

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when people lived for thousands
and thousands and thousands

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and millions of
years in the forests.

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And had a group of 30
or 40 human beings who

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wandered around
chewing on roots,

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and the women chewing on skins
and doing that sort of thing.

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All of the people's lives were
lived, all the way through.

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They may have been killed
fighting rhinoceros or whatever

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they were fighting,
and the women

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may have lost their
teeth from chewing up

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all these foods to get
the clothes on their men.

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But no one's life was
sacrificed pointlessly.

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No one was not allowed to live.

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But in an industrial
society, we can't

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have all these people living.

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We have a machine that's going
and we have to feed about 80%

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of the population
into the machine.

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Have you ever talked
to people who really

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worked in lines in Detroit?

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Have you ever looked at the
kind of lives those people have?

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They have wonderful
hobbies in the basement.

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They all have these
woodworking sets.

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Then they give up those and they
buy art, they buy a big boat,

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and they use that
for a year and a half

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and they get sick of that.

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They sell it.

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And then they go
into high fashion.

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And the only reason is that
they're being sacrificed.

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Exactly like slaves were
sacrificed to the Roman Empire

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to keep it moving.

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So it's very sad.

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It's exactly like the trees.

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We can't allow the
trees to stand anymore

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because we've got to have the
Sunday edition of the New York

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Times.

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The trees have got to
be turned into paper.

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So you're just in college,
you're just college kids,

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but you'll realize
when you get out

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that your main problem
was to prevent yourself

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from being turned into paper.

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It's not easy.

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And you will see, 10
years after college.

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You'll see people you
knew in college who were

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full of life, who were radiant.

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And when you look at
them, they're papers.

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Some kind of on,
some senior papers.

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But that's the problem.

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So anyway, this is a
poem touching on that.

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The cry of those being
eaten by America.

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Others pale and soft being
stored for later eating.

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And Jefferson, who
saw hope in new oats.

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The wild suburban houses go
on, with long hair growing

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from between their toes.

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The sleeping feet,
at night get up

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and run down the long
white roads by themselves.

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The dams reverse
themselves and want

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to go stand alone in the desert.

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Ministers who dive
headfirst into the Earth.

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The pale flesh spreading
guiltily into new literatures.

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That is why--

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No, that is why these
poems are so sad.

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The long dead running over the
field, the mass sinking down.

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The light in children's
faces fading at six or seven.

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The world will soon break
up into small colonies

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of the saved.

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I think we'll take a five-minute
break, and I'll be back.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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