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And the next few poems are
from a sequence called "Dancing

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in Odessa" And the first one is
called "In Praise of Laughter."

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"In Praise of Laughter."

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"Where days bend and
straighten in the city

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that belongs to no nation
but all the nations of wind,

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she spoke the speech
of poplar trees--

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her ears trembling as she spoke.

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My aunt Rose composed odes
to barber shops, drugstores.

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Her soul walking on two feet,
the soul or no soul, a child's

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allowance.

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She loved street
musicians and knew

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that my grandfather
composed lectures

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on the supply and demand
of clouds in our country.

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The State declared him
an enemy of the people.

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He ran after a train
with tomatoes in his coat

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and danced naked on a table
in front of our house.

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He was shot and my grandmother
raped by the public prosecutor,

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who stuck his pen in her vagina,
the pen which signed people off

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for 20 years.

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But in the secret
history of anger--

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one man's silence lives
in the bodies of others--

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as we dance to
keep from falling,

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between the doctor
and the prosecutor.

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My family, the people of
Odessa, women with huge breasts,

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old men naive and
childlike, all our words,

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heaps of burning feathers
that rise and rise

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with each retelling."

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