WEBVTT

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Something about
my first book is I

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think I mentioned all the
themes in my first book

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that I probably will ever
come to use or something.

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And this poem got into
the theme of the other

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in the sense of the inner
self, which I really went

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into again in my new section.

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I really, really
played with that.

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I'd like to read a
part of the long poem

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"Elements," which has
really got 16 sections.

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I'm just going to
read five through 10.

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The whole poem in all was
sort of a first impressions

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of Arizona after having
been here three years.

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It's, again, sort of using the
road image and sort of just

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impressions from
different places.

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Wild stallion voice off
the far hills after a mare.

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I hear your call, listening
above the saguaro and ocotillo

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as a searchlight
from the air base

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shoots its stars leaving
tufts of white clouds.

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Long after the barrage,
a pinto sighing,

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entices only shadows
in a fall storm.

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His silence is so clear.

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I feel oceans of patience
foaming into madness.

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Near Scottsdale, Mexicans
picked half the Pima cotton

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before falling of sunstroke.

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Their tan bodies lie now
fleeced in white fibers.

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They are speechless.

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On beaches somewhere in Asia,
far from their missions,

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machine gun men lie
buried in equipment.

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I have seen his mate.

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She has powerful haunches, but
stumbles crossing shell craters

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in New Mexico.

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Slower than usual, my
branches tuned by the wind,

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shade graves growing moss.

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The cool feeling relaxes,
roots sinking down

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to mingle with bones
of cliff dwellers, who

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raise corn in this desert.

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When sun peaks in Yuma,
there is nothing to do.

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Though I would flow in a heat
rising like water swirling

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in a wind at Mazatlan
for when body is calmed,

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the mind walks on water.

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Not out of the thirst
known when the barrel

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cactus is dry, but from looking
too long at the perfectly

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still.

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Alas, red flame
ignites in the sky.

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Days last, mood wanes,
the eyes squints.

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A gray cloud, the
final light settles.

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Out of their clouds of soil,
the long horned beetles

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emerge the tread
on the unshut eye.

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To think of the body
still when the rot of it

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sinks into the vine that
twists out of its root,

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a cemetery jammed with
spires and squares is

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a city that mocks the skyline.

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One corpse
undiscovered in Sonora.

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Even the marrow dries.

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One rides a field.

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Desert birds you cannot
name scream as they hunt

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the foothills.

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These streaks of a
desert burial follow him

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as thoughts of a public
funeral, as routes

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taken from intensive care units,
calling from some bitter pride

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to be quietly separate.

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A white skull unmoved.

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By dawn, the morsels
will be gone.

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Buzzards must tear through
clothing for liver and heart.

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The sun starts its cremation.

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Accelerating, wheels
barely touch the road.

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Telephone poles along fence.

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On a cycle, this is the highway.

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Year '69, storms of gnats
clogged the nostrils.

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Hands rise from the handlebars.

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Cat smeared into the pavement.

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Dogs bloody by the
roadside to be removed.

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Utah time and the Dead
Sea, races of people

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insensitive to salt, torn
floating, bellies to the gulls.

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Salt rubbed in the wound.

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Spirit robed in humidity
walking in the trail of the body

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past its deserted homes.

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Arrival, the coyote's
gorged reach the salt lick.

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A doe, my mistress runs off.

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I turn whimpering
back into Earth.

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The plain verse of
the '70s begins.

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Well, for the moment, that's
all I want to read off

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of the East by Southwest book.

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I guess it didn't get
around to explaining

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most of those titles.

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[CHUCKLES]

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