WEBVTT

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This one is called
"The Ice Cream Wars."

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I didn't know what this title
meant when I wrote the poem,

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but then about a year
later, an ice cream truck

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blew up in lower Manhattan,
injuring many people.

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And no one ever found out
exactly what happened,

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but there was
speculation that it

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was a revival of the ice cream
wars of the early 1960s, which

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was between rival ice cream
distributing companies, which

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I had not known about
when I wrote the poem.

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This goes to show if
you wait long enough,

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your poem will come
to mean something.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Although I mean it and project
the meaning as hard as I can

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into its brushed metal
surface, it cannot,

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in this deteriorating climate,
pick up where I leave off.

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It sees the Japanese
text about two men

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making love on a foam
rubber bed as among the most

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massive secretions
of the human spirit.

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Its part is in the shade beyond
the iron spikes of the fence,

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mixing red with blue.

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As the day wears on, those
who come to seem reasonable

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are shouted down.

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Why you all go?

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Look who's talking?

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Let's see you climb
off that tower.

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The waterwork's architecture,
both stupid and grandly

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humorous at the same time,
is a kind of mask for him

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like a seal's face.

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Time and the weather don't
always go hand in hand as here.

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Sometimes, one is
slanted sideways,

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disappears for a while.

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Then later, it's forget-me-not
time and rapturous

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clouds appear above
the lawn, and the

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rose tells the old, old
story the Pearl of the Orient

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occluded and still
apt to rise at times.

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A few black smudges on the outer
boulevards like squashed midges

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and the truth becomes a hole,
something one has always known.

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A heaviness in the trees, and no
one can say where it comes from

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or how long it will stay.

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A randomness, a
darkness of one's own."

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