WEBVTT

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Maybe a longish poem to
draw things to the close.

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Again a suite, which is
mixed up, and in small parts.

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This is from the lead
poem in my new book, which

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is coming out in January.

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Somewhere in New
York Harbor isn't

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clogged with giant squid
or any other emergencies

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of such nature.

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It opens with a quote
from Apollinaire,

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a poet I've always cherished.

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And if you haven't read
Apollinaire, you should.

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Guillaume Apollinaire.

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He said once, let
us open together

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the last but of the future.

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It's called "Outlyer,
in Interims."

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He halts, he haw, plummets.

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The snake in the
river is belly up,

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diamond head caught
in crotch a branch.

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Length wavering yellow
with the force of water.

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Who strangles is this
taste of present?

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Numen of walking and sleep.

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Knees of snow as the
shark's back is gristle.

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And if my sister hadn't
died in an auto wreck

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and had been taken
by the Indians,

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I would have something to
do, go into the mountains

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and get her back.

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Miranda, I have proof that when
people die they become birds.

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And I've lost my chance to
go to see or become a cowboy.

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Age narrows me to this window
and it's three weeks snow.

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This is Russia and I a clerk.

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Miranda throws herself
from the window,

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the icon clutched to her breast
into the snow over and over.

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A world of ruminants,
cloven-hoof summit.

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Is that less worthless
for being in front?

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There are the others
ignorant of us to a man,

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says Johnson to Lowell who
wouldn't come to tea, who's he

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son bitch.

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And he knows armaments and
cattle like a Renaissance

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Prince, knew love and
daggers and faintly knew

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of Dante or Cecco, it is a
world that belongs to Kipling.

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What will I die with in my hand?

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A paint brush for houses?

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An M15?

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A hammer or ax?

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A book or gavel?

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A candlestick
tiptoeing upstairs.

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What will I hold?

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Or will I be caught
with this usual thing

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that I want to be my
heart, but it is my brain

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and I turn it over
and over and over.

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Only miracles should apply.

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We have stones enough,
they steal all the heat

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and trip everyone, even
the weary throw stones

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away into tricky way of
saying something unnecessary

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will not do.

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I have sort of a major
grass fire up here.

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I mean a--

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[LAUGHTER]

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a cool fire, cool filter fire.

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This isn't going
to be distracting

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because the next part
is sort of captious.

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The girl standing outside
the bus station in Muskegon,

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Michigan hasn't noticed me.

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I doubt she reads poetry or if
she did would like it at all,

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or if she liked it the affection
would be casual and temporary.

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She would anyway rather ride
a horse than read a poet,

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read a comic rather
than write a poet.

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Sweetie, 15 minutes in
that black alley bent

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over the garbage can
with me in the saddle

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would make her affections
equal, let's be fair.

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I love my dear daughter
whose skin is so warm

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and if I don't hurt her
she'll come to great harm.

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I love my dog Missy,
her skin is so warm.

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I love my cat
Stanley's fur so warm.

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I love all my friends
their skins are so warm,

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my dear mother, dead father,
life sister, dead sister,

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two brothers their
skins are so warm.

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I love my lovely wife
her skin is most warm

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and I love my dear self,
my skin is so warm,

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I come to great harm,
I come to great harm.

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I want to be told the children's
story that will stick.

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I'm sorry I can't settle for
less some core of final delight

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in the funeral parlor my limbs
are so heavy, I can't rise.

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This isn't me in
this nest of silk

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but a relative bearing
my face and name.

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I still wanted to
become a cowboy

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or bring peace to
the Middle East.

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This isn't me, I saw
Christ this summer

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rising over the
Absaroka Mountains.

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Of course, I was drunk, I carry
my vices to the wilderness.

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That faintly blue person there
among the nasturtium was,

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among crooning relatives and
weeping wife however isn't me.

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Where we are born dead our
minds can taste the sauce

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and tell that other death.

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Along rain and we are
children, and a long snow

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sleeping children in deep snow.

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As an in grams all
journeys end in three steps

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with the mirrored door behind
it a closet and a closet wall.

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And he wants to write
poems to resurrect a God,

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to raise all buried
things the eye buries

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it the heart and brain,
to move wild laughter

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in the throat of death.

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A new ax, a new ax I'm going
to play with my new ax.

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Sharp blue blade,
handle of ash then

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exhaust to listen to my
new record Johnny Cash.

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Nine dollars in all,
two lovely things

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to play with far better and
more lasting than a nine dollar

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whore or two bottles of whiskey,
a new ax and Johnny Cash,

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sharp blue blade,
and handle of ash

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all the stream of your blood
runs as black as the coal.

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Saw ghosts not faintly
or wispy, loud they

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were raising on
Burly arms at midday

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which sun day and full
light, murder in delight,

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all former dark things and
noonlight all light things

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love we perform
at night and fuck

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as war wounds rub, and
sigh as others side blind

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and delight to the world
outside the window.

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When I begin to make analogies,
false analogies between animals

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and human then
countries, Russia's

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like America and
America like Russia,

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the universe is the world
and the world a university,

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the teacher is a crayfish,
the poem is a bird

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and a housefly, a pig without
a poke, a flame and an oil can.

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A woman who never menstruates,
a woman without glands who makes

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love by generalized friction.

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Then I went to the country
to think of precision.

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Oh, the moon is the
width of a woman's thigh.

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The Mexican girl about 14-years
old in the 1923 National

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Geographic found
in the attic when

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we thought the chimney was on
fire, and I stood on the roof

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with the snow falling looking
down into the black hole where

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the fire roared at the bottom.

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The girl, lying
in the Rio Grande

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in a thin wet shift
smiling, water covering back

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between breasts and
buttocks but then isolate

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the buttocks and
the muddy water,

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two graceful melons from
the deep in the Rio Grande

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to ride them up to the river's
source or down to the sea,

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it wouldn't matter, or
carry her like a pack

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into some fastness like
the sawtooth mountains

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and the melon butter
of her and water,

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myself in the cloudy brown water
as a fish beneath her, finely.

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All falseness flows you
would rust in jerks, hobbles,

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they the dewlap sniff eglantine
and in mint cleared voices

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not from dark, but in
puddles over cement,

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an eighth inch
deep of watery mud,

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all falseness flows comes
now where should it rest?

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Merlin as Merlin,
the cri de Merlin.

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Whose shores are never watched
as women have no more than one

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mouth staring at the ground.

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Repeat now from what cloud,
or clouds, or country,

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countries in dim sleep,
pure song mouthless,

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as if of a church buried
beneath the sea, one bell tower

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standing.

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And one bell, staring for
whom at ground's length.

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Elbows and ground,
stare at me now.

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She grows from the tree
half vine and half woman,

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and haunts all my
nights as music can

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that uses our tendons
as its chords,

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bowels to hurtle her gifts.

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Myths as Arcturus, Aldebaran.

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Picture is colored
in with blood.

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Her eyes were bees.

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And in her hair,
I seem to glisten.

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Drawn up as plants,
the snake wrapped

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around the crucifix
nose, glass nose.

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And oh, song, meal is
made of us not even

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for small gods who
wait in the morning.

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Dark pushes with no to
and fro over and under we

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who serve her as canticles,
for who falls deeper and breaks

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away knows praise
other than our own.

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Sing.

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Merely land and heavily
drawn away from the sea.

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Long before us, green has begun.

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Every crevice, kelp,
bird dung, froth the sea,

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foam over granite
wet sea rose and roar

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of Baltic, who went from
continent to island as wolves

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or elk would at night.

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Sea ice, assaulted glass,
slight lid, mirror over dark.

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As old and least of all,
gods with pine smell

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of dark and animals
crossed in winter

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with whales butting shores,
dressed without heat and skins.

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Said Christ, who came late,
nothing to be fond her here,

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lovers of wood, not stone.

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North goes over and down,
furthest from the sun.

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Allowed in the distance,
white wolf and whiter

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bear with red mouth.

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They can eat flesh
and nothing else.

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White winter, white snow, black
trees, green boughs over us.

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Arctic sun.

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One wild flower in profusion.

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Grasses blue.

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Sterile, fishless lake and rock.

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And northern lights
shimmering, crackling.

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As a child in mourning,
mourned for knows.

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How short and bittersweet,
not less for sane again.

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The child singing
knows near death.

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It is so alive.

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Songs made of her.

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How large is hawk or tree?

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Only a stone lives
beyond sweet things.

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So that the sea raises
herself, not swallows,

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but pushed by wind and
moon, destroys them.

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Only dark gives light.

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Apollo Christ.

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Only a blue and knotted
Earth broken by green,

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as high above God see
us in our sleeping end.

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We know no other,
curled as we are here.

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Sleep over Earth.

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Tongues fog.

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Thunder wars.

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Christ raises
islands from the sea.

00:12:02.420 --> 00:12:03.910 align:middle line:90%
Sea people come.

00:12:03.910 --> 00:12:06.040 align:middle line:90%
Clear your speech.

00:12:06.040 --> 00:12:11.830 align:middle line:84%
It is all that we have
allowed in here and now.

00:12:11.830 --> 00:12:12.402 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:12:12.402 --> 00:12:13.360 align:middle line:90%
That's about-- that's--

00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.710 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:12:16.710 --> 00:12:30.000 align:middle line:90%