WEBVTT

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Here's a little
sensation of what

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it's like to live in Boston
when you really don't

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want to be living in Boston.

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I lived there two years
after an extensive three year

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period of unemployment.

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And so I stuck it
out for two years.

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But I sort of
despised the place.

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And people at Harvard
had difficulty

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understanding my accent
and I had difficulty

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understanding theirs.

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I even asked does someone know
where the subway was one night

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and they said, you
mean the kiosk.

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That shows you
the kind of things

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I think you avoid by living
west of the Alleghenies.

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Or it's like a librarian who
said to me once in Boston,

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where are you from?

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And I said, I'm
from the Midwest.

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And she said, I
was in Albany once.

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So there's that kind of terrible
provincialism in Boston.

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So I'll read this little
poem, "Night in Boston."

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"From the roof, the color.

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From the roof, the nights
the color of a mollusk

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stained with teeth and oil.

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She wants to be rid
of us and go to sea.

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And the suit is the odor
of brine and imperishable

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sausages.

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Beneath me from a window,
I hear blue Hawaii.

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On Pontchartrain,
the Rex Club dances

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on a houseboat in a storm.

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A sot calms the water
without wetting a foot.

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I'd walk to Iceland,
saluting trawlers.

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I won't sell the
rights to this miracle.

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It was hot in Indiana.

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The lovers sat on a
porch swing laughing.

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A car passed on the gravel road.

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Red tail lights
bobbing over the ruts.

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Dust sweeping the house.

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The scent of vetch
from the pasture.

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Out there in the Atlantic, the
baleen nuzzles his iceberg.

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All monuments drown in
the lava of bird shit.

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I scuffle the cinders, but
the building doesn't shudder.

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They've balanced it on rock.

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The Charles River floats
seaward, bored with history.

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Night cutting you open.

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I see you're full of sour
air, like any rubber ball."

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