WEBVTT

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Now this poem, when
I wrote it at Irvine,

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I was sick for a
while the first year

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I went there because my
teachers hated the poems I

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wrote after I got there.

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Before I got there,
they liked my stuff.

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Then they hated them.

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They gave me a real hard time,
so I couldn't write, well,

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from October to December.

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And this poem, the
teacher liked short poems.

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And if you turned
in a long poem,

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he'd say, well, I
like short poems.

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That was the sort of
criticism we'd get.

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And he said this sounded
like Thomas Hardy's poetry.

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I've changed it a little.

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It's called "The
Corpse Hauler's Elegy."

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"Beside the river,
I stopped the wagon,

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loaded with the plague
dead, and have a drink.

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I fill my mouth
and swallow slowly,

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then climb back into my seat.

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The old horse drops
one turd, another.

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Corpses, I give
you these flowers."

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