WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:01.490 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:01.490 --> 00:00:04.130 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.130 --> 00:00:08.420 align:middle line:90% The title of this is The Poem. 00:00:08.420 --> 00:00:12.440 align:middle line:84% Would you like me more if I were a woman? 00:00:12.440 --> 00:00:16.160 align:middle line:84% Would you treat me better were I a man? 00:00:16.160 --> 00:00:17.120 align:middle line:90% I'm just words. 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:19.460 align:middle line:90% No, not words even. 00:00:19.460 --> 00:00:21.530 align:middle line:90% Just marks on a page. 00:00:21.530 --> 00:00:23.630 align:middle line:90% Tokens of what? 00:00:23.630 --> 00:00:25.340 align:middle line:90% Oh, you know. 00:00:25.340 --> 00:00:27.050 align:middle line:90% Then tell them, will you? 00:00:27.050 --> 00:00:29.120 align:middle line:84% Tell them to stop looking for me. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:31.250 align:middle line:90% Tell them I never left home. 00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:35.120 align:middle line:84% Tell them if you must, that I never left my body. 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:39.110 align:middle line:84% Unlike so many others, I had no wings, just shoulders. 00:00:39.110 --> 00:00:44.420 align:middle line:84% I was like the snow bunting of stout build but moderate size. 00:00:44.420 --> 00:00:47.720 align:middle line:84% Better make that exceedingly moderate size. 00:00:47.720 --> 00:00:49.640 align:middle line:90% I'm neither blessed nor cursed. 00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:52.010 align:middle line:84% But that the good suffered and evil 00:00:52.010 --> 00:00:54.380 align:middle line:90% closed the books in triumph. 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:56.540 align:middle line:90% I cured no one. 00:00:56.540 --> 00:01:00.710 align:middle line:84% When I died, my bones turned to dust, not diamonds. 00:01:00.710 --> 00:01:04.220 align:middle line:84% At best, a tooth or two became coal. 00:01:04.220 --> 00:01:06.290 align:middle line:90% How long it took. 00:01:06.290 --> 00:01:09.830 align:middle line:84% You would have liked me then, had you been alive still. 00:01:09.830 --> 00:01:12.380 align:middle line:84% Had you survived the silliness of the self, 00:01:12.380 --> 00:01:15.050 align:middle line:84% you would have treated me better. 00:01:15.050 --> 00:01:18.920 align:middle line:84% I never lied to you once I had grown up. 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:24.200 align:middle line:84% When X told you were wonderful, I said only that you existed. 00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:26.510 align:middle line:84% When y said that you were awful, I 00:01:26.510 --> 00:01:29.900 align:middle line:90% said only that life continues. 00:01:29.900 --> 00:01:32.570 align:middle line:84% I did not mean a life like yours. 00:01:32.570 --> 00:01:35.660 align:middle line:90% Not life, so proud to be life. 00:01:35.660 --> 00:01:38.150 align:middle line:90% Not life, so conscious of life. 00:01:38.150 --> 00:01:41.420 align:middle line:84% Not life, reduced to this life or that life. 00:01:41.420 --> 00:01:44.060 align:middle line:84% Not life, as something to see or own. 00:01:44.060 --> 00:01:46.400 align:middle line:84% Not life, as a form of life, which 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:50.030 align:middle line:84% wants wings it doesn't have and a skeleton of jewels, 00:01:50.030 --> 00:01:53.420 align:middle line:84% not this one of bones and becoming. 00:01:53.420 --> 00:01:57.530 align:middle line:84% How perfect are my words now in your absence. 00:01:57.530 --> 00:02:01.640 align:middle line:84% Ungainly, yet mild perhaps, taking the place of no field, 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:04.730 align:middle line:84% offering neither to stand in the place of a tree 00:02:04.730 --> 00:02:06.770 align:middle line:90% nor where the water was. 00:02:06.770 --> 00:02:09.590 align:middle line:84% Neither under your heel nor floating. 00:02:09.590 --> 00:02:15.410 align:middle line:84% Just gradually appearing, gainless and insubstantial, 00:02:15.410 --> 00:02:20.410 align:middle line:84% near you as always, asking you to dance.