WEBVTT

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Both of these are from a series.

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They are the last two
poems in a series,

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which I hope to publish someday
as a calendar or almanac.

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Stealing an idea
from Spencer, which

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was not original with him.

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And this is "November"
and "December."

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Each poem has the
name of a month.

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The first one I
read will be rather

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painful for me and for my
mother who is here today.

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It is a tribute
to my father, who

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died in November 1st this
past year, very recently.

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And in spite of the fact
that it's painful to read,

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I want to read it because I
want it to be a tribute to him,

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and he needed more tributes,
he deserved more tributes

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than he got.

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A very, very fine man and
a man of enormous wit.

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There's going to be a poem
in the New Yorker soon--

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sometime rather soon, which
is a testimony to his wit.

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And it quotes two of his lines--
two of his favorite lines

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which I love.

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He was fond of saying, "I'm
going to get drunk again

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tonight.

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God, how I dread it."

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[LAUGHTER]

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He was that kind of man.

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Very, very witty,
intelligent, charming man.

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And this poem is "November."

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It is divided into
four parts, and I

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will read the numbers
because there is

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a time difference in the parts.

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During the time of his--

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well, he had a very long,
very painful illness.

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And right at the end, the
weather in Boise where he died

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was magnificent, gorgeous
fall, late October weather

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and early November.

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And the leaves were
falling everywhere.

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I've never seen such
beautiful leaves coming down

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so fast, so many of them.

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And then shortly
after his death,

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turned out cold and rained.

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And so one of the
sections of this poem

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comes in later after the
weather had broken and changed.

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November, one.

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When I arrived, stone
crosses hung from the eaves

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and the ambulances were lined
up the door like hungry mice.

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The wound I left here
years ago, I asked them,

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has it healed yet?

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Your father is
sleeping, they told me.

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Come back tomorrow.

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We are closed for the night.

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But just at that moment,
out of breath and wearing

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somebody else's
clothes, a funeral

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rushed him to the
hospital barely in time

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to rescue the dead.

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Two.

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Before that, I was saying
something different.

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I was a flag trying to
escape from its pole.

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Now, I enumerate the
qualities of silence.

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First, the stars, which are
pores in the skin of night.

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Then my birth, which
did not include me.

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Then each leaf
falling as one wing

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flying away without its mate.

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Three.

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My father went in
search of death

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like a mole, blind
and beautiful.

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All summer, he listened to
the inner voice of his pain,

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rising in a song,
clear and high,

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dragging the music after it.

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His life was an unmade bed.

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Nobody rich or famous
ever slept there.

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He put his face into
the fire and said,

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I will not keep you waiting.

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Four.

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Wherever the rain goes
tonight, I will go with it.

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Through the city I
was born in, city

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of monuments, the statues,
their lethargy, their cold, wet

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faces.

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The names of the streets are
climbing into the mountains

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and the mountains are holding
their names up to a dark sky.

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Weeping birches continue to
weep for us and for each other.

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I cannot comfort them.

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I carry myself in my
own arms past the houses

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of the important where they
live among their habits

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as comfortably as
water on stone.

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The doors are asleep in
the arms of their hinges.

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I leave them sleeping.

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At every step, darkness seeps
from the holes in my shoes.

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I am cold as an empty glove.

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From the sidewalk, I
pick up a black walnut

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locked in its shriveled
skin like a mummy.

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Father, I say to it
tenderly, old father,

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it was harder than hell to
love you and impossible not to.

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Look what November
has done to us both.

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