WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a couple of
heavy poems or maybe just-- no,

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I'll read them both.

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These poems have to do with
a problem that we have,

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local and all along the border.

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The first one is
called "Borderland."

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I'm sort of proud
of these, in a way,

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because I read them in
Safford at the junior college

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there, the college, whatever
it is there, Thatcher.

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And after I came out--

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there was a little reception
for me, and then I went out.

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They had bashed in the
windows of my car, of my van.

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So I think these
poems are effective.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The first one, "Borderland,"
has to do with the fact

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that we feel proud of
ourselves because we managed

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to live through the
summer in Tucson,

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in our air-conditioned houses,
with our air-conditioned cars,

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et cetera, et cetera.

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And, at one point, I
mentioned monuments

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to the transcendence
of suffering.

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I'm talking about the
missions, among other things.

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Can you imagine what it was
like to wear those robes

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and live in those
conditions, or to be

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a native in those
conditions, working almost

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as a slave in the
heat of the summer?

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But those missions were,
in a sense, monuments

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to the transcendence
of suffering.

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This has an epigraph
from Annie Dillard.

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"When too much light
falls on everything

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a special terror results.

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In summer, the sky goes
flat and rapacious.

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Thirsty doves hurl
themselves through it

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and mountains rise up against
the light's authority,

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but they can hide nothing.

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Visiting rivers and relatives
never stay very long.

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What are we possessed by?

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Love of a place?

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Fear of a place?

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Devils?

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As our fair flesh burns, we
remain where those before us

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have bowed to the light
and created monuments

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to the transcendence
of suffering.

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But we have no
gift for suffering.

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That is for the permanent poor
who cross the desert on foot

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to work or die, who offer us
their hands for our labor,

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that we might be free to find
redemption or pleasure, who

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forgive us our lives,
our complicity.

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Their bodies are candles
burning for us so we will not

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stumble on our pathway to God."

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The other one is in--

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[APPLAUSE]

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