WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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My friends, well,
let's see I want

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to do something
else-- oh, I promised

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I would read a poem
called "Toward Certain

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Divorce" from this other book.

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This is called "Toward
Certain Divorce,"

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I'm told to helps to say two
things before reading it.

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One is that there's a he in the
poem there's a she in the poem,

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the he is a poet, not the writer
of the poem not me, but a poet.

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Two, the poem begins
in driving out

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into the Midwest countryside
to go to the house

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where these two people live.

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"Toward Certain Divorce."

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High beams stabbing the eyes of
animals, the ruts and spilling

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over shoulders Upon which
my right wheels occasionally

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cry I'm driving this
gravel road toward you

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for you just driving.

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Without controversy,
without a worm in my stomach

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not a thought in my head.

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When I pull up short
in your driveway,

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just to say thanks,
right, and stay well,

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I arrived to launder the
trees upon which the poet has

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shed his tears for years and to
whitewash the lemon-like house.

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It is the middle of the
winter of the heart,

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or the summer, I'm
never quite sure.

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Anyway the furnace is
practically floating

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or the two people
have turned it off

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because it is only
winter in the heart.

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Not a thought in
my head for winter,

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and here I am and it
might as well be winter

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or this is winter and
summer, does it matter?

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I remember getting here,
the air exceptional,

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because it was so clean.

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And that this purity, and
contour, and innocence

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such as we have
seen in the animals

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and in the farmer
when he farms, never

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kept anyone in the old country.

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I know well they left
for shirts and ties

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for their children and dresses
for the girls who would

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marry them to a new language.

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Friendship, which seems
so unpromising now,

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promised them an
envelope of profit.

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A land at land's
edge, the word itself

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extending to a
testament of geography.

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And now you want to
separate for good.

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And if I were better I
would stop you, wouldn't I?

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By singing to spite
this hunger though

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you beat the bars
of my harpish heart.

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And can I propose
the self-satisfaction

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if commanded to and
rise thus above you

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in alteration of
the solitary soul?

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Which poets worth salt
take as their task.

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I'm afraid I have only the
casual prophecy and not

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the life of the word,
that energy within me

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though I have sworn to seek it.

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Swear to me that you
leave to seek it too.

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That's fairly difficult
but there it is.