WEBVTT

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This poem is called "Maculate."

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It's got some interruptive
language most of which

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comes from the Gospel of Luke.

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On the page, it's-- you can see
because they're in parentheses

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and italics.

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Maculate just means the
opposite of immaculate.

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It means-- it can mean
contaminated or dirtied,

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but its basic meaning
is just spotted.

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The poem is in three sections.

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"1.

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I remember going door to door.

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It must have been 1936, and
half the town was out of work.

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We always had the Red
Cross drive in March.

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Consider the lilies,
how they grow.

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The snow melt frozen hard again,
and cinders on the shoveled

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walks.

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I was wearing a
grandmother's boots.

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Consider the ravens, they have
neither storehouse nor barn.

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The grocer gave a nickel.

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I can see him yet.

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Some people had nothing at all.

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And I came to Mrs.
Exner's house,

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no thief approaches
neither moth.

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The woman was so bent with
arthritis nearly whooped

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when she walked up the street
with her bucket and mop.

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Not Solomon in all his glory.

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The people she cleaned
for wouldn't keep a bucket

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in the house, no more.

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She gave me three
new dollar bills.

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I'll never forget it.

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I wanted the Earth
to swallow me up.

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2.

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Oil cloth on the kitchen table,
linoleum under his chair,

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and both of them, and ugly
hieroglyphic of yellow scorch

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marks ringed with black.

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My father must be tired to let
the ash between his fingers

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and the still lit
buttons of his days

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befoul the world around
him so, bone tired.

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And all but hammered to
his knees with drink.

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Burnt offering, I
have not required.

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The morning after
the night he died,

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the Undertaker's tail lights
on the snow packed drive.

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My mother sat just there.

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Burnt offering I will not have,
and he said, but only love.

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I'm going to get a
new kitchen floor.

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3.

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The raven is not an
unmixed consolation.

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What is manna to the
raven leaves a crust

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of blood above its beak.

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A treasure which
no moth corrupts.

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The freckled Lily festers,
the unspotted Lily

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drops its trembling stamen in a
smear of gold laid up for thee,

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and still it is no
little thing to think

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we shall be eaten clean.

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