WEBVTT

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This is called "Huzza."

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And listening to music,
you hear these orientals

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playing the violin.

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They're all orientals.

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I mean, 40 years
ago they were Jews.

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40 years from now,
they'll be WASPs.

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And I mean, they play,
they're two weeks old.

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It's like they
teach them to swim.

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You know?

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It's like pre-natal swimming.

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They come out speaking Greek.

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And you write about it.

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They're all poor, and
they practiced on a board,

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and then they go
to Carnegie Hall.

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But I couldn't--
I listened to it,

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and I couldn't remember
the name of the performer.

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He was Chinese.

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The only Chinese name
that was on my mind

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then was a young poet in
Chicago that I love very much,

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Chinese poet named Li-Young Lee.

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So I put him in
the poem instead.

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I made him the--

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do you know Li-Young Lee?

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Was he a student here?

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Fine poet.

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You know?

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Good poet.

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He's in Chicago now.

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"Huzza."

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I know this life is a madness.

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I'm lying in another
bed listening

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to the words of
Carmina Burana holding

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a pillow up the way I do.

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I think I lie for hours
listening to music.

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I'm becoming a sucker for
every Sonato, every etude,

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every Chinese baby sitting
behind his bamboo dreaming

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about his sticks and wires.

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I sometimes leap to my feet
when the piece is over,

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shouting until the
window rattles.

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I almost forget my
dead heart lying

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there, my rotten
pajamas and ugly robes,

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my floor with painted splinters.

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The sound of violins
in the empty room

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sends such a shiver
through my frozen body.

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The sound of cellos
by the mirror,

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an oboe beside the fallen
bed, the primrose concerto,

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the Kreutzer, that young
Chinese with the drooping wire,

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that Li-Young Lee.

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Ah, bravo!

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Eviva!

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Bravo!

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