WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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All of you who've told me this
week that you were looking

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forward to tonight
have made me feel

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like I was coming to a
birthday party for me instead

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of a reading, and
I appreciate that.

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Thank you Poetry
Center Director Jim

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Paul for that
beautiful introduction

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and for adding my name to a
list of amazing poets coming

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this year for the poetry series.

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The school newspaper
today reported

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that I said that someone else
said, that the manuscript I'll

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be reading from has themes of
direction, loss, penitence,

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duty, desire.

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But at this point, it's
at the level of rumor,

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so you'll have to
decide for yourself.

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What I'm hoping is that
you'll notice the ocean that

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really occurs in the poems.

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The ocean itself was a constant
for me outside my window

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as I wrote a lot of these
poems in the summer of 1999.

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And the poems in this book
were finished, pretty much,

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by November last year.

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But I've worked with it,
and my devoted readers,

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Frances Sjoberg and Boyer Rickel
have helped me in that process,

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making it a book.

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And I've also just let
it sit, and whenever

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I think of something
just sitting,

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I think of the Chinese Book
of Changes, admonition,

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to let three days pass
whenever anything is important.

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And that three days could be
three hours, or three weeks,

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or three months,
or three years--

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in this case, about nine
months, three times three.

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But I also think
of those pies that

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were left to sit out
on the window sills,

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in the illustrated version
of the Mother Goose nursery

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rhymes that my dad
used to read to me

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on the couch with my sisters.

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Do you remember the one, I
think it was, 47 blackbirds

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baked in a pie, and
when the pie was opened,

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the birds began to sing.

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And wasn't that a dainty
dish to set before the king?

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Tonight, you're the royalty.

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You're the King.

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And this is Desire Reclining.

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"In Violet, Inviolate"

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"The beauty of the previous
year's now solemn memory--

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what was honey colored,
what was spoken by chance,

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but contained a
porch and an hour.

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You, a weeping girl
with illuminated eyes.

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Your father, also small,
offering an entree of stars.

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I heard that the leaves were
destroyed because they wanted

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to live forever,
that they threw away

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their usual caution for
commingling of hands and feet.

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I'm sorry that I hurt you.

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The moon props awkwardly
against the tide, the ocean,

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too loud outside my window.

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We know what killed
the feline was not

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a miscalculation or
a crisis of will.

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We know that to mortify
is a transitive verb.

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There is no place to escape to.

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Ashes mark the
footpath of the one

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who was hesitant or unguarded.

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In review, everything
will have gone well

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until a single action
makes a wasteland.

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In a box called the
devil's country favorites,

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other disgraces
could occur to us--

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a forest grows freshly
green after a fire.

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Are the hills and
mountains subject to spasms

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of perfectability?

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Are they alive with remembered
phrases and coral ecstasies

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resounding across a snow lipped
canyon on a waning New Year's

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day?

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Steadfast, the mountain blunders
into an act of keeping still

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when it is time to
keep still, but it

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has trouble going forward
when it is time to go forward.

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First, we have desire
in its box of solitude--

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a sheriff to seduction, then
the body with its hungers,

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hoping to be tried.

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The penitent's punishment
is 10 million stones

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because duration in time is the
image of all that is powerful.

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The ocean is violet and
orange at its edges.

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Dusk is the place to lie
down and shrink effortlessly.

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Where we sit, a
hummingbird has decided

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to take a rest, luminous on a
branch protected from the wind,

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provided the world does not end.

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Years ago, in the maritime zone,
more like lovers than friends,

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we gesticulated
along the promenade--

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a brown spider worked at
staying upright in dry sand.

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A battered mango
flipped, rolling

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seaward in a wave rushing back.

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Two versions of
the end are at odds

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in the story of the
snake and its God--

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lose and go after
that which is lost.

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No one can taste the
darkness for you.

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Go naked in procession with
your flaws and candles.

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Hang your harp on a willow.

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Now that you are a captive,
what is required is a song.

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After a long walk, etched
figures and red water lilies

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among the beach rubble--

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enough evidence
that the righteous

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worship a god of
justice and anger.

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Wounded, we line
up for our cupful.

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At the crucial
moment, the law will

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decree where to lay our heads--

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harbor or willow?

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Banishment or bondage?

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Crossing the creek with
the scorpion on its back,

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the frog is stung.

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Stinging, the scorpion
knows the lack of beauty

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and the certainty of sinking.

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Mutually concerned with
ethics, water, danger,

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and the vocabulary of
instinctive behavior,

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their conversation lasted
the length of the ride.

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They both would have preferred
the other mark solemnly

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the spot where his own muddy
toes or earlobes receded

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from sight.

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In an ideal world, where
a few scattered hamlets

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make for a civility
with dry patches,

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the continued forecast is
overcast, clearing by midday.

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The skin is stretched cleanly
over muscle, organ, and bone.

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The eye in its cap
hidden from all

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but the unforeseen invasions.

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My old aunt falls from bed
and slices her good eye

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on the chrome edge of her chair.

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We have heard the heroism
of the ages rushing cleanly

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toward the baby tossed
from the burning building.

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Your suffering
days in the arroyos

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told me that when we die for
love courageously, tragedy,

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we are not saved by the
exercise of that courage.

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Tears failing to
honor and remorse,

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what was ours or yours,
are the armed forces

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of repentance and
improvement endlessly

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on the scale of
the eternal return.

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Do we avoid both by
being on guard and time?

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Indeed, if time is the
realm of gradual progress,

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I am certain we will meet
again on the pier by the river.

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Nothing is pure or as clear
as the soul, as they say.

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Nothing is uncompromised
and unprofaned.

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In a morning of clipped vines
and roses brought inward,

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I cocked my ear windward.

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A high school girl
raped repeatedly

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is told by her teacher that
there is an emerald core that

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has not been touched.

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He opens a book of
geological records and says,

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here, here it is.

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See.

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What I heard you
say is that we go

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along thinking that
what we are is inviolate

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until, when we asked for the
count, we are called up short.

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You were wearing a
sun gold sweatshirt

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and offered me eggs, not
like Nadezhda Mandelstam

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offering Akhmatova the
last egg in the house--

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sweeter, more like I woke up
hungry, and we were to go out."

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