WEBVTT

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Now this is a poem
that I've been

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working on a very long time.

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And it is, from
my point of view,

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it may not seem to be
such an ambitious poem.

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A poem and strange poem for me.

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Almost always, I
begin with a rhythm,

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with images, with an
overwhelming sense

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that I must explore this.

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And the process of
writing the poem

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is to discover
what it is that got

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me started to try to understand
the compulsion to explore,

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to write.

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And in this poem, it was
more that I understood

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where I wanted to go and had
a great difficulty in getting

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there.

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There have been
surprises on the way

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and I-- and I know
it isn't complete

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or it isn't finished quite,
but I'm not quite sure where.

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I've been working a
long time and I really

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want to read it very much.

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A poem called intersections.

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Under maples and
beside watery birches,

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between Eagle pond and
the sheep barn, in a sand

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ditch, a double line of rust.

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I stride on alternate ties.

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Should I tell you I'm talking
about walking on the railroad?

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I think you'd get it
if you were seeing it,

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but a double line of rust is
the rails of the railroad.

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I feel diffident, obviously,
reading new things.

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I'm sorry.

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I'm going to start again.

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Do I need to say-- wait, look.

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Let me look through
and see if there's

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anything else I want to say.

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I guess not.

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I guess not.

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Intersections.

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Under maples and
beside watery birches,

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between Eagle pond
and the sheep barn,

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in a sand ditch, a
double line of rust,

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I stride on alternate ties.

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Black creosoted 8 by 8's,
wedged into crushed granite.

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In the summer of
'43, long war trains

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skidded tanks, Jeeps, air
frames, dynamos, searchlights

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and troops to Montreal
for Hitler's war.

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We counted cars from
the stop hay rack

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at the endless crossing.

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98, 99.

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And my grandfather
told, his voice

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shaking with rage and oratory,
how the mighty Boston and Maine

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kept the state house in
its pocket 100 years.

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I walk a line that vanishes
in an absence of freights,

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in the solute and quiet
of a bypassed place.

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Walking, I make over
that bunting day.

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The first train came to
Potter place and Gale

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with fireworks,
cider and speeches.

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Further, I extend the
long rails, Western buzz

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and hum the hive of rolling
stock, the 1,000 card

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perspective of Ohio,
Dakota, Nebraska

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where men who left these maples,
banished by narrow valleys

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and by stones, rode
rails toward gold.

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On this blue day,
beneath the high jets

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glint of swooped aluminum,
pulling its feathery contrail

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westward, I see the
jet die into junk

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and the highway vanish
like the railroad.

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Goldenrod breaks through asphalt
to clear old dirt for pine.

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I walk in a present, continually
vanishing at the striding

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point of intersection.

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Horizontal track by which our
wars, presidents and metals

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assemble the Earth for ruin.

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And the other, a vertical
track joining dead to unborn,

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track of divinity and death,
denied each day 10,000 times

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by every utterance of commerce,
by the dump's waste that chokes

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the pickerel, , by the hymn
unsung by the cement vault

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enclosing the bodies coffin.

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Ridden again only in
meditation and in dream.

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A tree grows upward only as
far as it grows downward.

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And the whole maple
resembles the tree

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reflected in Eagle pond.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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