WEBVTT

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OK, more narratively,
because I thought

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break it up and have
narrative stuff.

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So it seemed like I could
do it in a broken way.

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This poem is called "Until
There's Nothing, Just

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the Sea, a Sea of Leaves."

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"We've been up to the meadow.

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The wildflowers that had seemed
everywhere thinned gradually

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as we ascended.

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Think of an unbuttoned
shirt falling

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soft in stages from a man's
back, shoulders first.

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Now the strength of
a good arm showing

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more and more, and the chest,
of course, the meadow cresting.

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Until we came to where the
horses have been buried.

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Crosses of thick vine weathered
and rope like over two of them

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above the third the
presumed favorite

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a cross of horse shoes welded
together painted white.

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Not out of boredom,
but because I've always

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found it difficult to
resist looking down

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from a great height.

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I looked away down on the
world that we left behind us.

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How unimportant it seemed
and at the same time

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how very detailed.

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The skim and dart of
blackbirds in their swiftness

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seeming to foil their own
shadows they seemed to want to.

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And below that the blighted
orchard, whose trees could

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in almost any light make
salvation look like nothing,

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so much as a script, that in the
end though perhaps reluctantly

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they've been written out of.

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So much for the world.

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It was then he turned to me
as if turning were an art one

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he'd lost the mastery of.

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Or as if some part of
him the part more wounded

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were caught inextricably in
the kind of dream in which one

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has been asked to say the
difference between mercy,

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compassion, and pity.

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And to one's surprise one
does know the difference.

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The answer comes as a
star, clear, attainable,

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blindly, a bit unsteadily,
stutter of gratitude,

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sway of despair.

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The hand rises, as if at
last to reach for it."

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