WEBVTT

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And the next poem the
imagery is largely

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taken from an island, a Greek
island called Santorini.

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And it's a poem written for a
child, who died of leukemia.

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The poem's title is the poet
goes about her business.

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Michelle has become
another dead little girl.

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An easy poem, instant
Praxitelean, instant

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75-year-old photograph
of my grandmother

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when she was a young
woman with shadows.

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I imagine we're blue
around her eyes.

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The beauty of it, such
guarded sweetness.

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What agreed of
bruised gardenias.

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Oh, Christ, whose
name rips silk.

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I have seen raw cypresses
so dark the mind comes

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to them without color.

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Dark on the Greek Hillside,
dark volcanic, dry, and stone.

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Where the oldest
women of the world

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are standing dressed in black
up in the branches of fig

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trees in the gorge knocking
with as much quickness

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as their weakness will allow.

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Weakness, which my heart must
not confuse with tenderness.

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And on the other
side of the island,

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a woman walks up the path
with a burden of leaves

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on her head guiding the goats
with sounds she makes up

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and then makes up again.

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The other darkness is easy.

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The men in the dreams who coming
together to me with knives.

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There are so many traps
and many look courageous.

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The body goes into such
raptures of obedience.

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But the huge stones
on the desert

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resemble nobody's mother.

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I remember the snake after
its skin had been cut away,

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and it was dropped,
it started to move

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across the clearing making
its beautiful waving motion.

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It was all meat and bone.

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Pretty soon, it was
covered with dust.

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It seemed to know exactly
where it wanted to go,

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toward any dark trees.

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