WEBVTT

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I'm going to read--

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now these are curiously
in the context of Japan,

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but they are love poems.

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And I'm going to read three love
poems from a good [INAUDIBLE]

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"Poems for Robin."

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The first is called "Siwashing
it out once in Siuslaw

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State Park."

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Now, the noun "siwash" means--

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it used to be a coastal Indian
of the Pacific northwest,

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and it was a corruption
of the French "sauvage."

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Now the verb "to siwash"
means to sleep out all night

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without a sleeping bag or bag
or blankets tending a small fire

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so you don't get too cold.

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So "Siwashing it out once
in Siuslaw State Park."

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I slept under rhododendron.

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All night, blossoms fell.

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Shivering on a
sheet of cardboard,

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feet stuck in my back,
hands deep in my pockets,

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barely able to sleep.

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I remembered when we were
in school sleeping together

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in a big, warm bed.

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We were the youngest lovers.

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When we broke up,
we were still 19.

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Now our friends are married,
you teach school back east.

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I don't mind living
this way, green fields,

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the long, blue beach.

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But sometimes,
sleeping in the open,

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I think back to when I had you.

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That's based on a curious
classical Chinese meter

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Five beats to the line.

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Two beats

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and then a caesura,
then three beats.

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The second one is called "A
Spring Night In Shokoku-ji."

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Eight years ago
this May, we walked

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on the cherry blossoms at
night in an orchard in Oregon.

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All that I wanted then is
forgotten now, but you.

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Here in the night in a
garden of the old capital,

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I feel the trembling
ghost of Yugao.

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I remember your cool body naked
under a summer cotton dress.

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