WEBVTT

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Let me read another poem out
of the same period in my life.

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It's called "Heaven,"
and it's about meeting--

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but, no it's not about meeting.

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It came out of the experience
of meeting an extraordinary man.

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I worked with him
for a long time.

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He was a very strange
and silent man.

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Gradually, kind of took me
into his life and showed me

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the way he lived, and
I couldn't believe it.

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I'd never seen anyone
live like that.

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And the way he lives stuck in
my imagination for a long time,

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and then one day
I wrote about it.

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It's called "Heaven."

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It's just about this
guy and it takes place

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during the Second World War.

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"If you were 27 and had done
time for beating your ex-wife,

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and had no dreams you
remembered in the morning,

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you might lie on
your bed and listen

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to a mad canary sing and
think it all right to be there

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every Saturday ignoring
your neighbors, the streets,

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the signs that said join,
and the need to be helping.

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You might build, as he did,
a network of golden ladders

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so that the bird could roam
on all levels of the room.

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You might paint
the ceiling blue,

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the floor green,
and shade the place

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you call the sun so that
things came softly to order

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when the light came on.

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He and the bird lived in
the fine weather of heaven.

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They never aged, they
never tired or wanted all

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through that war,
but when it was over

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and the nation had been saved,
he knew they'd be hunted.

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He knew, as you
would too, that he'd

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be laid off for not being
braver and it would do no good

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to show how he had taken
clothespins and cardboard

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and made each step safe.

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It would do no good to
have been one of the few

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that climbed higher and
higher, even in time of war,

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for now, there would be the poor
asking for their share and hurt

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men in uniforms, and
no one to believe

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that heaven was really here."

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