WEBVTT

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This poem is called "The Album."

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Oblong, brown, embossed with
gilt fleur-de-lis, stiff,

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mildewed along the spine.

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I opened it to look through
the eye of its broken lens.

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Clock faces, ancestors,
towers of dripping sand,

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bloomed halves,
torrents of shadow.

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Music pours from the
holes in its pages--

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opus, mazurkas, marches,
the songs of my uncles,

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the songs of the
soldiers, my uncles,

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who stood at eager
and spitting play.

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In the hot sun of the
album the snapshots fade.

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Picnic, the regatta, the
wedding in the forest,

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and all blanched, all lost.

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Last horseman after
the album, red eye,

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unshaven, they
twirl their reatas,

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they lean forward
on their pommels,

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The weeks and days of our
lives in their lasso's circle.

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While the insolent, taunting,
in a crown of cardboard,

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the queen of diamonds leans from
the album and calls my name.

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