WEBVTT

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The next poem is quite long.

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It's a page and a half,
I guess that's not long

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compared to what
some people write,

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but then it's for my
father Lester Cuddihy

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who died about 21 years ago.

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And there's an epigraph from
Léon Bloy, the French Catholic

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writer.

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Then it says most of
us no longer believe

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enough to be able to blaspheme.

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The name of it as
The Missing Letters.

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Trays like yells on a
lunch break, the headlines

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all across the page
of the country.

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Do you have to read
them backwards?

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Your eyes slow, filming.

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Cottonwoods like tall
skeletons each one

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leaving me to confront another.

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Dad is that you
there in the vault?

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I could never visit your face.

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I dreamed once
that you came back,

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then I wasn't afraid
of you anymore.

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You were leaning
back on your heels.

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I could see the bottoms
of your suspenders

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on the white shirt, the place
where the leather formed.

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Your eyes narrowed as
you looked at me, then

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down something in the grass.

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A leaf shriveled dark like
a sender on the cornea.

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Blinking doesn't help.

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The crucified face you
have left it behind

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for us, your shroud woven of
the world, bodies writhing

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in the gray bark,
brawn, hell, and death,

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we invent them each for himself,
no peace and separation.

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When I was a child yelling,
I could beat my friends

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in a race around the block.

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I must have looked like
one of those upper branches

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gaping tense in a hurry.

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Ours was a young
race, the world,

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the place where each of
us knelt. In the winner's

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circle, nothing was missing.

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I'm here now stuck
like these cottonwoods

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with their crooked limbs.

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The barks tough room for
generations among the nouns

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and verbs, the whole
alphabet keeping faith

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with each other
like our ancestors,

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the tribes of Europe.

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But my head aches.

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I feel my heart go
naked like the letter

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L, one wooden elbow, the slave.