WEBVTT

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Next will be the fragments
from a longer love

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poem called, "Natalia."

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I'm just going to read
a few fragments from it.

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And you'll see the pieces on the
bottom of the page, I believe--

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I'm only going to read
the top of the page.

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And if you want to read
the bottom of the page,

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you could do so yourself, OK?

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So, from, "Natalia."

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"On the night I met her,
the Rabbi sang and sighed,

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God's lips on his brow,
Torah in his hands.

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I unfastened her
stockings, worried

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that I have stopped worrying.

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She slept in my bed,
I slept on a chair.

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She slept on a chair,
I slept in the kitchen.

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She left her slippers
in my shower,

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in my Torah, her slippers
in each sentence I spoke.

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I said, those I love
die, grow old, are born.

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But I love the stubbornness
of her bedclothes!

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I bite them, taste bedclothes,
the sweet mechanism

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of pillows and covers.

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A serious woman, she
danced without a shirt,

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covering what she could.

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We lay together on Yom
Kippur, chosen by a wrong God.

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The people of a book,
broken by a book.

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'Let me kiss you inside
your elbow, Natalia,

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sister of the careful.'

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He spoke of gratitude, his
fingers trembling as he spoke.

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She unfastened two
buttons of his trousers,

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to learn two languages--

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one for ankles and
one for remembering.

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Or maybe she thought
it was bad luck

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to have a dressed
man in the house.

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With an eyebrow pencil,
she painted his mustache.

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It made her want to
touch him and she didn't.

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She opened her robe and
closed it, and opened

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and closed it again.

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She whispered, 'Come
here, nervous.'

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He followed her on his tiptoes.

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We fell in love and
eight years passed.

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Eight years.

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Carefully, I
dissect this number.

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We have lived with three
cats in five cities,

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learning how a man
ages invisibly.

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Eight years!

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Eight!

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We chilled lemon vodka and
we kissed on the floor,

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among the peels of lemons.

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And each night, we stood
up and saw ourselves.

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A man and a woman, whispering
'Lord,' one word the soul

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destroys to make clear.

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How magical it is to live!

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It rained at the market.

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With my fingers, she tapped
out her iambics on the back

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of our largest casserole,
and we sang, 'Sweet dollars,

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why aren't you in my pockets?'

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