WEBVTT

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Here's a poem
called "Apocalypse."

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You know what
apocalypse is, I hope--

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revelation.

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And I talk several times in
this poem about the 60 of us.

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These are my first cousins
on my father's side.

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There are actually
close to 70, but I

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don't want to be a braggart.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And this talks about
a visit to Scotland,

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where my former wife
and I lived for a year.

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And I taught at a senior
secondary high school.

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We took this trip
on spring vacation

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to the Isle of Skye,
which you've read about

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or haven't read about.

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And the poem goes like this.

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"Of all 60 of us,
I'm the only one

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who went to the four
corners, though I

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don't say it out of pride but
more like a type of regret.

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And I did it because there's no
one I truly believed in, though

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once, when I climbed the hill
in Skye and arrived at the rough

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tables, I saw the only other
elder, who was a vegetarian--

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in Scotland--

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and visited Orwell, and
rode a small motorcycle

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to get from place to place.

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And I immediately stopped
eating fish and meat

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and lived on soups.

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And we wrote each other in
the middle and late '50s,

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though one day, I got a
letter from his daughter

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that he had died in an accident.

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He was, I'm sure
of it, an angel who

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flew in midair with
one eternal gospel

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to proclaim to those inhabiting
the Earth and every nation.

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And now that I go through
my papers every day,

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I search and search
for his letters.

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But to my shame, I've
even forgotten his name,

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that messenger who came
to me with tablespoons

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of blue lentils."

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