WEBVTT

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"Song of Gifts."

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I just this titled this poem
without thinking about it.

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Later we can begin to
realize that most people,

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a lot of people wouldn't
consider the things in here

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gifts, which are called gifts.

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And that seeing
a thing as a gift

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was just a matter of how
you looked at it, I guess.

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I recognized it.

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"The first gift was hilarity,
as language vanished

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and my senses were restored.

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The second gift
was the free place

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I knew wholly down
to the vibrance

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of the scales of each
fish swimming the brook

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through the valley of grasses.

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The third gift was
the hand darkness

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offered from darkness
with knowledge

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that to hold a hand was comfort
and silence the moaning,

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and that my efforts
to pull it into light

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were violations of love
with no success possible.

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The fourth gift was the
vision of my loved ones

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dead with age and
beyond me forever.

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And the chance to ask my own
corpse a single question.

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The fifth gift was fire.

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In that fire, I burned without
even the promise of death

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to relieve my anguish.

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The sixth gift was release
from pain and access

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to eternal energy.

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The seventh gift was grace.

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The last gift was
re-entry into language

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and the loss of
all previous gifts

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into memory for the final
gift restored my citizenship

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in babble."

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