WEBVTT

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This is a poem called "Water."

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And it's a poem about water.

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It's a poem that I remember
how I happened to write it

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or that first impulse that
sent me into the material that

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eventually became this poem.

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I was reading a book
called Dream Interpretation

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for the Millions.

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There's a whole
series of these books.

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Fortune-Telling
for the Millions,

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Haunted Houses for the Millions,
Astrology for the Millions.

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It's called For the
Millions Series.

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And Dream Interpretations
for the Millions

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was a really terrible book.

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It was alphabetically organized.

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And if, presumably, you had
a dream about fountains,

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you would look up "fountain"
and it would tell you

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what the dream meant.

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Invariably, the dream either
meant, according to this book,

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that it was good or bad in
terms of your romantic life,

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or good or bad in terms of
your financial situation.

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But I was struck when I
encountered the heading

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for "water."

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There were three subheadings,
which I rather liked.

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And they were, what the water
is, what the water does,

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and what you do with the water.

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The poem is divided into
three short sections.

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I hope, at that
point, its connection

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with Dream Interpretation
for the Millions ends.

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I won't read the numbers.

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"Water"

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Whichever way water
turns, it touches itself,

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turning in another direction.

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Invisible now, now reflecting
whoever finds himself looking

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beneath the line of the wind.

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You remember the rules.

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Water seeks the level
that pleases it,

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making a place for itself
wherever it chooses,

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calling everything
it touches its own

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and falling back in
its own good time.

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Hundreds of feet beneath
you, it creeps along a fault,

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drop by drop, widening the
rock, softening an edge,

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breaking off a splinter.

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So a cave blossoms.

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Water counts the time
but does not care.

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You could learn from it.

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Speak to it of your troubles.

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Ask about your wound,
why it refuses to heal.

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Ask about absence.

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Water has spent a
long time learning

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how to fill with itself the
space of a missing thing.

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Wherever it can go, water goes.

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On your window the early
frost has drawn a map,

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and the small cloud
of your breath

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fades from the
blade of the knife.

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The shape of someone
like yourself drifts

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in the shelter of still water.

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You reach down.

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A maze of circles
meets your hand.

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