WEBVTT

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Next three poems
are family poems.

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And I'll just introduce
the first one,

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which is called The
Execution of the Rosenbergs.

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Many of you, I hope,
know that the Rosenbergs

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were executed in 1953 after
President Eisenhower refused

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to grant them a pardon.

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They were executed
during a period

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of the darkest part of our
history, the McCarthy era.

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Alleged, but not
proven communists.

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Allegedly giving secrets
to the Soviet Union,

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without substantial proof.

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And the source for this
poem was when I was a child,

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my parents took me, or my mother
took me, to a demonstration

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against their execution.

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The Execution of the Rosenbergs.

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That summer, father
moved farther away,

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framed by a larger event.

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A president elected, the
communists uncovered,

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and two Jews executed
in their place.

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So mother mourned a
parallel of death.

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Losses to be measured
against the past.

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At the march, I was confused by
the masses of people gathered.

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A stranger's breath and tears.

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Could they have known
what my father meant?

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It seems a long time ago.

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The personal life, the tiny
room, I lived in as a child.

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But there is a photograph,
which opens up almost

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like a porch looking out to a
field of families out there,

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sitting on the weeds, calling
flowers by improper names.

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Then someone's called away.

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Then another.

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Till the field is the
future's reflecting glass.

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Someone's called to the gallows.

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Grandfather spits on the Tsar.

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When he's asked to serve, father
drives off in his Chevrolet.

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The road's terminal.

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He can't turn back.

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The lights dim
momentarily and the Jews,

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who inhabited this
Earth, illuminate

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the flesh then flake to ash.

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Who's to blame?

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The slogans at the march
don't seem strong enough,

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but the communists
are partly right.

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Everything's a
struggle and to forget

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the past is to give up hope.

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[APPLAUSE]

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