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Reading a succession of
these things, I realize--

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and I hadn't anticipated this--

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I realize recurrence
of certain words.

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So I want to try to do
something about the immediacy

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of an encounter like this
that's more than just reading

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the already prepared
poems and say,

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sometimes it seems
to me as if writing

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is like writing contexts
for things you want to say.

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And at least for myself, the
message that comes back often

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is something I detect
as recurrent in my life,

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but not necessarily asserted
by the grammar of the poem.

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Well, what I noticed
was how often

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I said friends, friends,
friends in these first three

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or four poems.

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And maybe it's because I want to
assume that's right, you know?

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And that's what led me to stack
the poems this way, I suppose.

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I wanted to also to take a
kind of stance about this.

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I'd like to read the poems
with all the faith in them

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that I can muster at the moment.

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But I assure you that I'm
feeling doubts and tremors

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often.

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But I'd like to read
through with conviction.

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But after they're read--

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and I've often said this
before-- after they're read,

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I'm ready to
sacrifice any or all

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in the interest
of this occasion,

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any kind of interchange.

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This is like having an
assignment, a challenge

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in the title, a story
that could be true,

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a story that could be true.

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If you were exchanged in the
cradle and your real mother

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died without ever
telling the story,

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then no one knows your name.

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And somewhere in the world, your
father is lost and needs you.

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But you are far away.

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He can never find how
true you are, how ready.

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When the great wind comes
and the robberies, the rain,

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you stand on the
corner shivering.

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The people who go by,
you wonder at their calm.

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They miss the whisper that
runs any day in your mind, who

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are you really, wanderer?

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And the answer you
have to give no matter

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how dark and cold
the world around you

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is, maybe I'm a king.

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