WEBVTT

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Well, when you report,
your currency is words.

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And the written word
is very important,

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as well as the oral word,
which we're having here.

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And when I was in Ireland,
I had an experience

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which left me penniless
in that currency.

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I met an illiterate man.

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And I had to go to
Ireland to meet a man who

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did not read at all or write.

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And I didn't know it
until about the third week

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in knowing him he was so
verbally alive in his speaking

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manner.

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That I really never guessed
it until I handed him a poem.

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And then he said, would
you read it to me?

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And I did.

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And we were very good friends.

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He had to go to Germany.

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And I knew that I would have
to go to the north on a reading

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tour before he got back.

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So I wanted to leave him a
message no just to say goodbye.

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So I realized that
somebody else would

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have to read the poem to him.

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And so I had to
write the poem where

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you hide all little messages
inside it, because you want

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the man or the voice
that's delivering

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it to not to embarrass him,

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But still you want to
say something true.

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So it was a very
hard poem to write.

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I mentioned in here Cherokee.

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That's because my great
grandfather was Cherokee.

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I never mentioned
this in the States

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before because there seemed
to be such a fad in mentioning

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your Indian relatives.

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And so I found that
in Ireland though,

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it seemed very exotic
to mention this.

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So I mentioned that he was
very fascinated by this.

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So this is my poems
called Love Poem to be

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read to an illiterate friend.

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I have had to write this
down in my absence and yours.

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These things happen.

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Thinking of a voice added, I
imagine a sympathy outside us

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that protects the message from
what can't help being said.

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The times you kept your
secret putting on glasses

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or glancing into a
page with interest

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give again the hurt
you've forgiven

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pretending to be one of us.

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So the hope of love translates
as the series of hidden moments

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where we like to think
someone was fooled into it.

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Who was I then who filled these
days with illegible warnings?

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The marriage is broken.

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The land pillaged
by speculators.

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No word for a stranger.

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This island where I
thought the language was

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mine has left me
lonely and innocent

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as you, or that friend
who let you copy

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his themes until the words
became pictures of places

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he would never go.

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For that, I call you Cherokee
after my own lost tribes.

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For that, I have buried
white feathers have

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torn the clod of grass from the
roadside for which these words

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must find you off the page.

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