WEBVTT

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And the last thing I want
to read from this book

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before I look at
the new manuscript

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is called "The Ritual
of Condolence."

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I'll read five of the sections.

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It's written in 15 parts.

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And "The Ritual of
Condolence" is basically

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in our tradition with Hiawatha,
as people probably heard

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of him.

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He's actually-- his name
is pronounced Ayenwathaaa.

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When Ayenwathaaa had daughters,
they were killed by--

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a leader who's evil
actually killed them.

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And Dekanawidah who
is our peacemaker,

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and who sometimes you hear of
if you know Iroquois history,

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the peacemaker
came, he was the one

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who condoled Ayenwathaaa
through these deaths,

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and was able to explain to
him how he needed to grieve.

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So there were 15 steps that
Dekanawidah came up with.

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And I've kept the
original title,

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say, society itself
is seen as a woman.

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And when we lose one member,
that woman goes into mourning.

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So the woman needs to be healed.

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You have to address everything
that changes in mourning.

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How we-- our eyes close up, we
cease to see what's happening

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around us, our ears close up,
we cease to hear the things that

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would hear us, our throat--

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within the breast,
the darkness of

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grief that we forget
to look at the sun.

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So kept us different
headings, but I'll just

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read five of the 15.

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It came at a time in my
life when my father just

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died of a brain tumor, and
I was feeling like I needed

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to go through the process.

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"The Ritual of Condolence."

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"Ears or hearing.

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At times, I lived
like a man obstructed,

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hearing nothing of what
was taking place on Earth,

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but focused on the flush
of blood to many parts.

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But at least I know when
I lost faith in myself.

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Desert November, a lover of
laughs not saying goodbye

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though I knew it was.

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Because the Russian olive
dropped all its leaves at once.

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I threw the dog from my
bed and he limped for days,

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fearing fracture.

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Never again to trust
myself, sentence

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to hear the cry of
all things broken.

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Throat.

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Of all that rises from
that deep pitcher,

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throat of the flesh
bodies hardly obstructed.

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When he died, I went to the
river and called him like a man

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from the field at
supper time, and the air

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was filled with the
prevalence of his absence.

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And now, you leave
and when I cry,

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it sounds like pure adolescence,
a simple choking and throttling

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embarrassing and shaming
red faced and angered

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stroking sore Adam's apple.

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This knot I feel is the
sum of my words collected

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in this place.

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Within his breast.

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The disordered and wrenched
within bed and breast, emotions

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thrown off in a night
of fevered dreaming

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lay tangled on the hardwood
among strands of your hair.

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But today began the
work of reorganization

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and I broke every cup you
ever raised to your mouth.

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I replaced the heart between the
lungs straight in the spleen,

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the liver and order, but the
heart looked like a queer new

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building standing in place
of one once familiar,

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which even now I cannot recall.

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The woman and warrior.

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I know that the
hair at his nape,

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turning to oily down the way
the sick transform before diving

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or taking flight.

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Preparing a place,
he'd smooth the pillow

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three times before
resting his head,

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once for the father,
once for the son,

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and once for the Holy Ghost.

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He died only once, and who
can know what it was she

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felt waking to a silence
only the planet should know

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and trusting his
breath to the becoming.

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Anything can happen on
Earth, even insanity.

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Sleepless for the
barking of birds, the dog

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lays twittering at
the foot of my bed.

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A slow splash caused
by the falling

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away of the mind, the
thickening slip of clay

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from a lake so strangely excited
by this unexpected chance

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to form and reform
fingers in this red Earth,

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that when these hands
are complete again,

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the clouds might
cease to squirm."

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