WEBVTT

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The first poem I want
to read is called

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Ukrainian pastoral of
my grandfather, who

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had come from Russia was
a small town photographer.

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And back in those days, this
was I guess in the 1920s.

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He would compose very romantic
photographs and paint backdrops

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and you'd get a sense that
you were out in the country.

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And the very beautiful
things were happening

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when it was really in a studio.

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And this was one photograph that
I had seen of my grandfather

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and grandmother.

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Ukrainian pastoral from a
photo of my grandparents.

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On a wooded hillside
by a river, a woman

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pauses to catch her breath,
leans against a silver birch.

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What she sees we can't
know for her eyes are shut.

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She is stocky, young, her
calves glisten in sunlight.

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When she opens her
eyes to admit us,

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the Earth is a maypole around,
which she sweeps a clearing.

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Upon the water, a small boat
is making its way toward shore.

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A man rowing.

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His muscular shoulders
propelling him through mist.

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Perhaps, he imagines the
shape on the hillside,

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who might be a wife or
a sweetheart waiting.

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But his back is to us.

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Perhaps he shuts his eyes
to hear the river's pulse.

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When I enter the parlor,
I think you've been

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reading the book on your lap.

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But your eyes are shut.

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I remove my old coat.

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I see a parakeet
preening in its cage,

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and a salad of onion and
cucumber set on a table

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by a base of yellow iris.

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Was it something you heard?

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My foot on the
walk that woke you?

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Or does light convert us
into people, husband and wife

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the one reading the other
entering an arch as he

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does each day of his life.

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On the wall, a woman
partially hidden by trees,

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and a man gliding over water.

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About whom we can invent a story
or better say nothing and wait.

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