WEBVTT

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Thank you, all.

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I like to read at
colleges and universities

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a little poem, which
arose from the fact

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that I once went on
a binge of reading

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biographies and autobiographies
of famous literary men.

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And at the end of reading
a whole slew of such books,

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I was left with the impression
that these famous literary men

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had made the lives of their own
children perfectly miserable.

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Now at the same time, I
thought that, obviously, I

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remembered that these
very same men had

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served as parents to other
people's children absolutely

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beautifully.

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That other people's children
had learned from them,

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had tested themselves
against them.

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The-- two of their
books, the literary men

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had taught the children,
other people's children, what

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they didn't want
to know, had made

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them face what they didn't want
to face, as good parents do,

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and so on.

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And out of this paradox,
out of this paradox

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came a little poem
called "Relationships."

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"The legal children
of a literary man

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remember his ugly
words to their mother.

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He made them keep quiet
and kissed them later.

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He made them stop fighting
and finish their supper.

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His stink in the bathroom
sickened their noses.

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He left them with sitters
in lonesome houses.

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He mounted their mother
and made them wear braces.

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He fattened on fame
and raised them thin.

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But the secret son
of the same man

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sprang up like weeds from
the seed of his word.

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They eat from his hand.

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And it is not hard.

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They unravel his sweater
and swing from his beard.

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They smell in their sleep
his ferns and roses.

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They hunt the fox
on his giant horses.

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They slapped their mother,
repeating his phrases.

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And swell in his sight
and suck him thin."

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I like to read this
at universities.

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Because university people write
term papers and dissertations

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about these famous literary
men's-- men and suck them

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thin."

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