WEBVTT

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This one is called "It Was
Raining in the Capital".

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Uh, I know it's
expected of a poet

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to, sort of, chat a bit about
the poems in between them

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but usually I don't do it
because I can't remember

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what I was thinking
about when I was writing

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or what prompted them.

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[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

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If it's of any
interest, I read--

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I was reading the novel, The
Master and Margarita when I--

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right before I wrote this poem.

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And it seems to, kind of,
reflect the plot of that book.

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"It was raining in the
capital and for many days

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and nights, the one
they call the Aquarian,

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had stayed alone
with her delight.

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What with the winter
and its business,

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it had fallen to one side, and
she had only recently picked it

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up where the other had died.

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Between the pages
of the newspaper,

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it smiled like a face.

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Next to the drugstore
on the corner,

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it looked to another place.

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Or it would just hang
around like sullen clouds

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over the sun.

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But, this was the point, it was
real to her and to everyone.

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For Spring had
entered the capital,

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walking on gigantic feet.

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The smell of witch hazel
indoors changed to narcissus

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in the street.

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She thought she had
seen all this before.

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Bundles of new, fresh flowers.

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All changing, pressing upward
to the distant office towers.

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Until now, nothing
had been easy.

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Hemmed in by all that shit.

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Horse shit, dog shit,
bird shit, man shit.

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Yes, she remembered
having said it.

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Having spoken in that
way, thinking there

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could be no road ahead.

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Sobbing into the
intractable presence of it,

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as one weeps alone in bed.

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Its chamber was
narrower than a seed.

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Yet, when the doorbell rang,
it reduced all that living

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to air as curiosity
'Kyrie eleison' it sang.

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Hearing that music
he had once known

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but now forgotten, the man.

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The one who had waited
casually in the dark,

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turned to smile at
the door's span.

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He smiled and shrugged, a lesson
in the newspaper no longer.

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But fed by the ink and paper
into a sign of something

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stronger.

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Who reads the news and takes
the bus going to work each day.

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But who was never born of woman,
nor formed of the earth's clay.

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Then what unholy bridegroom
did the Aquarian foretell?

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Or was such lively intelligence
only the breath of hell?

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It scarcely mattered
at the moment.

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And it shall never
matter at all.

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Since the moment will not
be replaced, but stand,

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poised for its fall.

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Forever.

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This is what my learning
teaches, the Aquarian said.

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To absorb life through the
pause for the life around you

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as dead.

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The sun came out in the
capital just before it set.

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The lovely death's
head shown in the sky

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as though these
two had never met."

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