WEBVTT

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These poems-- these
recent poems I've

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written have been in
those oblique and rather

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personal ways increasingly
political, in some senses.

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And the idea has
occurred to me--

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I was thinking about
it on the plane

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today-- it occurs to me why.

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I'm at about the
age where you're

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as old as you can be and
not remember having--

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I can remember being
a teenager when

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there wasn't a war in Vietnam,
but I can only remember

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about a year and a half of it.

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And I have the feeling that
somehow my childhood was stolen

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from me by this damn war.

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And so when I go back and
write poems about my childhood,

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I find, in some odd sense,
that they're political to me.

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And it's one reason why
I've doubtless I've become

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so obsessed by my childhood.

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Here's a strange
poem about that.

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It's a poem called
"Sweet Dreams."

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"So this is defeat.

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If I bring it home, mother
would say good, marry it.

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Father would tell
it the good joke.

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Defeat is tired.

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We talk about how there are too
few emotions, how when the news

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comes we are full, just as there
is always mince and pumpkin

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pie at Thanksgiving
because it is Thanksgiving.

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And then we are hungry.

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And it is then I
feel as beginning

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to relax, as on
a vacation Sunday

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when it rains and everyone
has something to read.

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Someone looks up.

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It's dusk.

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We could send out for food.

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Food would come.

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I'm asked to propose a toast.

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To home, I say.

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I'm amazed at myself.

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I say it again and again.

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Defeat wonders if
I'm coming up to bed.

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When I think of all those
years I didn't love my parents.

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I go up.

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There is always another floor.

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I go up.

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I grow happier.

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This is the way we go.

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To heaven or to bed."

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