WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Then I have another
softball poem,

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this will be in the new book,
which will be out in April.

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This is a Villanelle.

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The next year I start
going to the games again,

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this time the teams
were different

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and the grad students
Barry and Hank Campbell,

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who had been on the
team had left town.

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And one of the girls on one
of the girls teams in town

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was in social work
of some kind and she

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brought some of her charges to
the games, to watch the game

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and these were people who
were handicapped in some way.

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There were about 15 of them
and I guess, some of them

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were suffering from
neurological problems,

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and perhaps some of them
may have been retarded,

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I don't know.

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But she was in charge
of these people

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and they sat watching
the game and of course, I

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watched the game, but
I watched them too

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and then I got to thinking
how the way our minds work,

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sometimes we turn ourselves
into handicapped people.

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And so I was thinking about
them, and myself, and life

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in general, the things
you ought to be thinking

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about when you write a poem.

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So this is a Villanelle and it's
called the Freaks at Spurgin

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Road Field.

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The dim boy claps,
because the others clap

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The polite word handicapped
his muttered in the stands

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Isn't it wrong the way
the mind moves back?

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One whole day I set contrite,
dirt, LA Union Station 46

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sweating through last night

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The dim boy claps,
because the others clap

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Score 5 to 3 picture
fading badly in the heat

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Isn't it wrong to be
or not be spastic?

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Isn't it wrong the way
the mind moves back?

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I'm laughing at a
neighbor girl beaten

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to scream by a savage father
and I'm ashamed to look

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The dim boy claps,
because the others clap

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The score is always close,
the rally always short

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I've left more
wreckage than a quake

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Isn't it wrong the way
the mine moves back?

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The afflicted never
cheer in unison

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Isn't it wrong the
way the mind moves

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back to stammering
pastures where

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the picnic should have worked?

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The dim boy claps,
because the others clap.

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