WEBVTT

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Wanting to reassure
my depressed friend,

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I said no, I'm still
your suffering colleague.

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And I showed him this and
he felt so much better,

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because it's so
pissed off, you know.

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God, Phil's still pissed off.

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There's hope.

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And the only thing
you have to know

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is that I am an identical twin
and I was born in Detroit.

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I don't think there's anything
else referred to that--

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extraordinarily
clear and lucid poem.

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[LAUGHS] It's called
"You Can Have It."

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My brother comes home from
work and climbs the stairs

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to our room.

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I can hear the bed groan and
his shoes drop one by one.

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You can have it, he says.

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The moonlight
streams in the window

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and his unshaven
face is whitened,

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like the face of the moon.

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He will sleep long after noon
and waken to find me gone.

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30 years will pass before
I remember that moment when

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suddenly, I knew each man has
one brother who dies when he

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sleeps and sleeps when he
rises to face this life,

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and that together, they're only
one man, sharing a heart that

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always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked,

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a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks,

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am I going to make it?

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All night at the ice
plant, he had fed

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the shoot its silvery blocks.

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And then I stacked
cases of orange soda

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for the children of Kentucky,
one gray boxcar at a time,

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with always two more waiting.

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We were 20 for such a
short time and always

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in the wrong clothes,
crusted with dirt and sweat.

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I think now we were never 20.

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In 1948 in the city of
Detroit, founded by de la Mothe

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Cadillac for the distant
purposes of Henry Ford,

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no one wakened or died.

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No one walked the streets
or stoked a furnace,

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for there was no such year.

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And now that year has fallen
off all the old newspapers,

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calendars, doctor's
appointments, bonds,

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wedding certificates,
driver's licenses.

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The city slept.

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The snow turned to ice, the
ice to standing pools or rivers

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racing in the gutters.

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Then bright grass rose between
the thousands of cracked

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squares, and that grass died.

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I give you back 1948.

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I give you all the years
from then to the coming one.

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Give me back the moon
with its frail light

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falling across the face.

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Give me back my young
brother, hard and furious,

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with wide shoulders
and a curse for God

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and burning eyes that look
upon all creation and say,

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you can have it.

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[APPLAUSE]

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