WEBVTT

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I don't know if you can see it.

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But there's an
enormous fly swatter.

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If I'm bad, I fear
I'm going to--

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it's going to swoop down.

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And I'm going to join
you in the audience.

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I'm going to read mostly
from manuscript tonight

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having read it Pima
just a year ago.

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I'm going to try not
to repeat myself.

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This first poem,
it's called "Elegy

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to the Pulley of
Superior Oblique."

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And that sounds like a
title for one of those poems

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that I often write
that makes no sense.

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But you'll be relieved to
know that's not the case.

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And the pulley of
the superior oblique

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is just part of the
musculature of the eye.

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And the poem is, I think, a
fairly uncomplicated poem.

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It has a little tribute
under the title.

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It reads, "Weston's photograph
of a border bridge."

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It does have something
to do with a photograph

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that Weston took
one July about--

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I don't know--

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90 miles from here.

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"The three girls
in a donkey cart

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are ascending the
tiled adobe bridge,

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its little arc over the
dry wash under noonday sun.

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Below them, a wizened
farmer with a bag of grain

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sleeps in the
shadows of the bridge

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while sitting on the
dry river bottom, which

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looks like a long,
black skid mark

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vanishing off the side
of a cliff on the highway

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beyond the purple mountains.

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There are miserable
people standing

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for the duration in a halated
light whom I would never

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describe, for it would be a lie
to write, for example, that two

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house flies are like two fiddles
drawing in a mahogany vise

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beside the blue chisels
and almond pastes.

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That all over the
shop, fans are blowing

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across huge blocks of ice.

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That would be a lie.

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There's blood on an apron
and the green checkered bills

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in the cigar box.

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And the carpenter's
wife is a Jew.

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This is Warsaw.

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10 years before my birth,
the sweltering ghetto.

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Months later, the
sweltering snow.

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So I must tell you that
the sisters in the cart

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are unhappy and not beautiful.

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They have suffered
scabs and diarrhea.

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They've boiled water
out in their yard

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beside the deep
fragrant cilia plants,

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and had been too weak to
drag the scalded water just

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a foot or two beyond the fire.

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They've all fainted
once or twice

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while squatting in the
trench out behind their barn.

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This influenza killed
her mother and aunt.

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And now, they've
crossed the bridge.

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And the donkey looks under
his belly slumps to one side

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and falls dead.

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The younger sister
begins to sob.

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The oldest jumps from the car
and runs down a pebble slope

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to the sleeping farmer.

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The farmer wakes frightened
not for a moment,

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looking away from
the girl's chest that

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is running with sores.

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He says a man is taking
our picture from above.

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The toothless farmer
then waves to Weston.

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And the girl slumps onto the
brown river bed with her arms

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around herself.

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There are dogs sniffing
near the donkey.

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There are two flies.

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What does the sick girl
have to do with our lives?

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That excellent man Rosen knows.

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Open your eyes.

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There's sky, mountains,
the moment of death

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is instant, contrived."

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Kenneth Rosen is the
Rosen I should have sung.

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He's a poet who
I admire greatly.

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