WEBVTT

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And then here comes a good poem.

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It's about Gothic, Illinois.

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Illinois is one of
my favorite states.

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I spent a year
there at something

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called the Center for Advanced
Study in 1970 and I hated it.

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But I had some very
good friends there,

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and I wrote a couple
of pretty good poems.

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And what's cited here in
this particular poem happened

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on the third day I was there
living in faculty housing.

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And I was told I was
very fortunate to be

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living in faculty housing.

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This happened on the
third day and there

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was a stanza in the first
part of the original, which

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I cut because I think,
I thought it was weak.

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But there's an
epigraph to the poem

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which I'd like to read to you.

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And the epigraph
reads as follows--

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it came from a letter
that a friend wrote to me.

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Three things hinder: to
see the good to be done

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and to neglect it, to hesitate
when the occasion presents

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itself, to know
evil and follow it.

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And the poem is called
"Homage to the New World."

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"Surrounded by scientists
in a faculty house,

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the trees wet with hot
rain, grass thickening

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under the trees, welcomers
come-- ones and twos,

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gifts of shoehorns, soap,
combs, half a subscription

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to the courier, some news
about changing plates,

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the nearest market, how to pick
up the trash, a gallon of milk

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twice a week, OK?

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On the third day here, a
friend came in the night

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to announce a phone
call and a message

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and heard the shell go
in and the rifle cocking,

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our next door animal vet
neighbor, and cried out,

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don't shoot.

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And walked away to remember
the phone and the message,

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the crickets and the rifle
cocking, grass and hot rain.

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I write in the night air
of the music of Coltrane,

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the disk of his voice in
this contralto heart my wife.

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So what, kind of blue,
these fatherless whites

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come to consciousness with
the history of the gun.

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The new world, if
misery had a voice,

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would be a rifle cocking."

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