WEBVTT

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I want to read you a
few relatively new ones

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to start with.

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The first one has to
do with my daughter

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and it's called, "The Writer."

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It's a-- the ideal date of
this poem would be 1966 say.

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When we were living in a great
ark of a house in Portland,

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Connecticut, and my daughter
who was forever writing then

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as she is forever writing now,
sat in a-- in the best room

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in the house, the sunniest
room of the second floor doing

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short stories and poems
and ultimately, a novel.

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"The Writer."

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"In her room at the
prow of the house where

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light breaks, and the windows
are tossed with linden,

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my daughter is writing a story.

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I pause in the stairwell,
hearing from her shut door

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a commotion of typewriter
keys like a chain hauled

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over a gunwale.

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Young as she is, the stuff
of her life is a great cargo

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and some of it heavy.

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I wish her a lucky passage.

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But now it is she who pauses
as if to reject my thought

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and it's easy figure.

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A stillness greatens in
which the whole house seems

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to be thinking, and
then she is at it again

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with a bunched clamor of
strokes, and again is silent.

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I remember the
dazed starling which

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was trapped in that very
room, two years ago.

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How we stole in, lifted
a sash and retreated

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not to affright it.

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And how for a helpless hour
through the crack of the door,

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we watched the sleek, wild,
dark, and iridescent creature

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batter against the
brilliance, drop

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like a glove to the hard
floor or the desk-top.

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And wait then,
humped and bloody,

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for the wits to try it again.

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And how our spirits
rose when suddenly sure

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it lifted off from a
chair back, beating

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a smooth course for
the right window,

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and clearing the
sill of the world.

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It is always a matter, my
darling, of life or death,

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as I had forgotten.

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I wish what I wished
you before, but harder."

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