WEBVTT

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This is not a poem about me.

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It's written in first
person, but it ain't me.

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It's me if I were somebody else.

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[LAUGHTER]

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That's not the title.

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The title's not that good.

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Me if I were somebody
else is a good title.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's ungrammatical.

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It's wonderful.

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It's like, "They
Feed They Lion,"

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which the Library of Congress
calls, "They Feed the Lion."

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[LAUGHTER]

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They're trying to make
me an English poet.

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It's called "I Could Believe."

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Let's see.

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Is there anything-- there
are a lot of references

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to the Spanish Civil War.

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The Ebro is a river in Spain
where the Republican side

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suffered a terrible defeat.

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Prospect Park is a
park in Brooklyn.

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The Free Press is a
Detroit newspaper.

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Washington Boulevard
is the fanciest street

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in Detroit, where I grew up,
with all the fancy shops.

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There used to be.

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I don't know.

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I don't know what it's like now.

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It's called "I Could Believe."

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"I could come to believe
almost anything--

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even my soul, which
is my unlit cigar.

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Even the Earth that huddled
all these years to my bones.

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Waiting for the little
of me it would claim.

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I could believe
my sons would grow

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into tall lean booted men
driving cattle trucks to Monday

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markets.

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And my mother would climb into
the stars, hand over hand,

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a woman of imagination
and stamina

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among the airy spaces
of broken clouds.

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And I, middle-aged and
heavy, would buy my suits

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by the dozen--

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vested ones, and
wear a watch chain

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stretched across my middle.

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Even with none of that,
alone and naked at the club,

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laid out to be rubbed
down, I would groan orders

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to a t-shirted half-wit.

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I came home from Spain
bitter and wounded,

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opened a small portrait shop in
an office building in Detroit,

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hired an alcoholic
cameraman, and married

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a homely woman good with books.

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It is 1943, and young
girls wait in line

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for the white lights blinding
them, drop their blouses

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and shoulder straps,
and smile for the men

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scrambling on Pacific atolls.

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I have bought a second shop
on Washington Boulevard.

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When I can't stand
it, I drive out

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past the lights to the
small factories where

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the bearings for tanks and half
tracks are ground, and park,

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and smoke in silence on
the shoulder of US 24--

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7,000 miles from my lost Spain.

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A lifetime from the Ebro,
where seven men I came to need

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went under in a small boat.

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And I crossed alone to a
burnt shore and kept running.

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Someone said, it was
Prospect Park in the summer--

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except for the dying.

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Except for the dying,
this would be heaven.

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And I, 37 years old, would
be a man I could talk to,

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or a body falling away
to the dust of Spain,

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a white face becoming water.

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A name no one names.

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A scramble of sounds,
hiccups in the striking

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of teeth against teeth.

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Except for the dying,
I would be dead--

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my face born forever on an
inside page of the Detroit Free

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Press.

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Except for the dying,
I could believe."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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