WEBVTT

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We were talking about
this poem last night

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at the bar after class.

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And I think I was
implicated as putting

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Scarlett Johansson
and the Janjaweed

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on the same moral
plane of existence.

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[CHUCKLING]

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Which I did not intend to do.

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I like Scarlett
Johansson way too much.

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[CHUCKLING]

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Janjaweed militia's in Somalia--

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Ethiopia.

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Sudan.

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Sudan.

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Sudan.

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My ignorance is profound.

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[CHUCKLING]

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In Ethiopia.

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I'm one of those
atheists who wakes up

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in the middle of the night,
and says, God help me.

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[CHUCKLING]

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I was thinking about that
when I wrote this poem.

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I don't believe God exists.

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But there I am,
making these appeals.

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They're quite real.

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I can-- I'm not kidding.

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This is called "Powers."

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Informally, I believe in
God's powers, though not

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in his presence.

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And I can see that
this has led to

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various momentary advantages,
a certain freedom of choice.

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And so, like other citizens,
given half a chance,

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I have fallen half in
love, any number of times,

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with one sonsy
actress or another.

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Please insert here,
if you wish, the lips

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and decolletage of the
ineffable Scarlett Johansson.

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Her air-conditioned
tattoos not unlike those

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of 1,000 bicycle shop clerks.

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And as such, in similarly
pleasurable ways,

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I like to watch a black
dog enter a drenched field,

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and immediately soak it up.

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And have repeatedly and gladly
given money to men and women

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because they could play
the guitar and sing.

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And on my 11th
birthday, asked for,

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and received from my
parents, a set of cuff links

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and plated tie pin.

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My luck has been in
friendship and love.

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I like to be carried
by people and things.

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And in fact, once stood on
the deck of a white hydrofoil,

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as it did what a white Greek
hydrofoil is supposed to do.

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With burning diesel
fuel and water,

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it made a summer wave off Naxos.

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On the other hand,
believing in God's powers,

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but not in his existence,
may have had some drawbacks.

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Feelings of being
stranded, say, either gone

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deep into the brine of my
being, myself, in solitary,

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lost inside my mind, in
the invariable infinity

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of variant neurons.

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Or forced to inhabit a planet
with frequent, inexplicable--

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or all too explicable--
episodes of cruelty.

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Insert here, at the
moment, the wrath

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of the Janjaweed
in Hashaba Wasit,

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or elsewhere,
sweatshops, approved

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of by theorists of economic
development and efficiency.

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But staffed, 15 hours
a day, by women,

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who, like my great
Aunt Anna Mello,

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will probably end up
with wrists swollen

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to twice their size,
necks bent by bad light,

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and balky sewing machines.

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As in the long view, it often
seems one unwavering orbit

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of infected geese, cold
refugees, and insurgents,

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traveling from here to here.

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What I mean to say is that
God has abandoned both us,

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and his powers.

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He's given them up.

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And they hurtle
around inside us.

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