WEBVTT

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"Bleecker Street"

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"It's a lovely June
afternoon and I'm heading up

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Bleecker Street for a
hazelnut espresso latte,

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the kind made out of real
hazelnuts, not syrup,

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hoping it will empty me of all
my bickering ideas about love

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and fate and immortality,
so I can hear

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the fertile songs of spring.

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Miguel de Unamuno, whose
name is impossible to say

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without smiling,
believed self-love widens

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into love of all that lives.

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Thank God for Unamuno,
for hazelnut lattes.

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But the infinite
archaeology of my stupidity

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prefers the charms of
self-pity to the equilibrium

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of self-love.

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Perhaps these
three Chinese girls

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giggling into cell
phones, lavishly spending

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each moment of
their youth, truly

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believe the mountain
of self has no top,

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and each breath is a
reckoning with fate.

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Perhaps these shiny
boutiques, each so resolute,

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so eager to please,
are weary of decorating

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the illusions of
another century,

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prefer the runaway slaves
they hid in their root

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cellars, their dreams of
slaughter and deliverance.

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Perhaps this beautiful
blonde woman,

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screeching to a stop
in a lilac Mercedes,

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pursued by wailing
police cars, finally

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understands that it is not only
for the soul, but for the mind

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that happiness is a necessity.

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'Is the rich bimbo
stoned or just stupid?'

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an old man, radiant
with rage, screams.

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Perhaps everyone
secretly admires

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something momentous
about himself,

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with the mass and inner
life of a cathedral,

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in the tradition of
the Spanish saints

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and mystics who cherish the
bliss of infinite sacrifice.

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Perhaps this street remembers
the loneliness of war widows,

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the roll call of absent
names, its first kisses

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on the corner of
West 10th Street,

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the swooning confetti
heat of victory,

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the scalding springs of defeat?

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Indeed, the street is a wave of
advocacy and streaming window

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peonies and tulips, a
fierce glimpse of history,

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an echoing of nightly gunshots,
a flag of black pigeons flowing

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east toward the end of
a continent, a hunger

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for immortality, a tiny
brusque city, a bickering

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idea, a useless boutique,
a fertile song widening

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into a love for all that lives."

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