WEBVTT

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This is called "Penny
Parker's Mistake."

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"That it could not be seen as
constituting an endorsement,

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any way she looked up,
down, around, around again--

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always the same for her.

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All was her now--

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was in the way it winked
back, for naturally,

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to be selling these old Indian
dinosaur eggs and to be,

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in some obscure way, in their
debt not for the modest living

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they provided, rather-- and
having come to know them

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at all--

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not everybody need
know everybody,

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and-- when you stop
to think of it,

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this fits each of us tighter
than any of the others--

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was the throwback to the
earlier age each dreamed,

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a dream with little gold flecks
and reflection of wet avenues

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in the japanned facing of it.

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Now, naturally, we, all caring
for the success of the success,

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cannot cancel postures from some
earlier decade of this century

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that come to invade our walking
like the spokes of an umbrella

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and, in some real way, undermine
the heaven of attitudes,

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our chance was.

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To be in quarreling this
way now is the truer,

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but slyer stage of inebriation,
[PAGE TURNING] or in my throat,

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to the poet as a basement quilt,
but perhaps, to some reader,

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a latticework of regrets,
through which you can see

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the funny street with the
ends of cars and the dust--

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the thing we always
forget to put in.

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For him, the two
ends were the same,

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except that he was in
one looking at the other,

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and all his grief
stemmed from that.

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There was no way of
appreciating anything else, how

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polite people were for instance,
and the dream, reversed,

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became a swift nightmare of
starlight and frozen puddles

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in some dread waste.

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Yet you always hear how
they are coming along.

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Someone always has a
letter from one of them,

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asking to be remembered
to the boys and all.

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That's why I quit and took
up writing poetry instead.

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It's clean.

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It's relaxing.

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It doesn't squirt juice
all over something

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you were certain
of a minute ago,

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and now, your own
face is a stranger,

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and no one can
tell you it's true.

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Hey stupid.

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[LAUGHTER]