WEBVTT

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"My father's cousin Rawley
in the service, we got word,

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and I think a neighbor's infant.

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That was common.

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My mother had lost one, too.

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Then he went to town
to join the war.

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The Sheriff hold him home in an
open rig, spat on the street,

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been jailed a week or two.

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She ran from the
henhouse shrieking,

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shaking eggs from the purse of
her white apron to the ground.

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Before I was born, he built
a wide oak drain board

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in the kitchen, didn't just glue
the boards, screwed them down.

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Glue held, one split in two.

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My mother was an
angel out of heaven.

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My father was a viper.

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I wished him dead,
then he was dead.

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But she was, too.

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All day, one room, me and the
cherubim with their wet kisses.

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Without quarantines, who knew
what was happening at home?

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Was someone put to bed?

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Had someone died?

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The paper said
how dangerous they

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coughed and snuffed in their
double desks facing me.

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They sneezed and spit on
books we passed around.

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And on the boots,
I tied, retied,

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barely out of school
myself, price at the front.

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They smeared their lunch.

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They had no handkerchiefs, no
fresh water to wash my hands.

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When the youngest started
to cry, flushed and scared,

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I just couldn't touch her.

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I let her cry.

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Their teacher, and
I let them cry.

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Dear Mattie, did you
have the garden turned?

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This morning early,
while I took my watch,

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I heard a wood sparrow.

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The song is the same no matter
what they call them over here.

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Remember, too, when we were
marching in the cottonwoods

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and sycamores and
potholes, how fond

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they struck me
coming from the ship

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after so much empty flat
gray sky on deck winds,

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plowing up tremendous waves, and
down below half the battalion

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ill.

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34 we left behind the sea,
and more fell in the road.

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It's what took Pug.

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But there's enough of us
still and brave enough

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to finish this quickly
off in hurry home.

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You wiped a fever brow,
you burned the cloth.

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You scrubbed a sick room
floor, you burned them up.

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But wouldn't burn, you
boiled, like applesauce,

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out beside the shed
in the copper pots.

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Apple, lightwood,
linen, featherbed,

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it was the smell of that
time that neighborhood.

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All night, the pyre
smoldered in the yard.

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Your job, to obliterate
what had been soiled.

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But the beating heart no
longer cares for risk.

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They're all that
are still passed

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from lip to lip, the blessed
relic, and the ritual cup.

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To see in the pile
the delicate pillars

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slip she'd worked by hand,
roses, and blue wreaths,

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as if hope could be
fed by giving up.

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The barber, the teacher,
the plumber, the preacher,

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the man in a bowl or men in
a cap, the banker, the baker,

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the cabinet maker, the farm and
postman, the clerk in the shop,

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soldier and sailor,
teamster and tailor,

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man shoveling snow
or sweeping his step,

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carpenter, cobbler, liar, lawyer
laid them down and never got

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up.

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Oh, oh, the world wouldn't stop.

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The neighborhood grocer,
the neighborhood cop,

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laid them down and
never did rise.

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And some of their children
and some of their wives

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fell into bed and never got up,
fell into bed and never got up.

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Oh, yes, I used to pray.

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I prayed for the baby.

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I prayed for my mortal
soul as it contracted.

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I prayed a gun would
happen into my hand.

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I prayed the way our nearest
neighbors prayed, head down,

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hands wrung, knees
on the hard floor.

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They all were sick.

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And prayed to the merciful
Father to send an angel,

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and my Henry came.

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"The least of these,"
my brethren Henry said.

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"Wherefore by my
fruits," Henry said.

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All of them survived, and do
you think they're still praying,

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thank you, Lord, for Henry?

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She was so tiny, we kept her
in a shoe box on the cookstove,

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like a kitten.

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Dear Mat, for the red
scarf, I'm much obliged.

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At first, I couldn't wear it.

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Bright colors draw
fire, but now I can.

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We took a shell, but three of
us were washing out our socks

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in a crater near my post.

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Good thing, the
sock was off my foot

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since the foot's
all to pieces now.

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Don't you fret.

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It could have been my head.

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I've seen that here.

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And then what use would
be your pretty scarf?

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The nurse bundles me up
like an old man or boy

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and wheels me off the
ward, so many sick.

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But the enemy suffers worse.

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Thanks to our god damn
guns, as Pug would say.

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Victory will come
soon but without me.

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Once the world had had its
fill of war, in a secret wood,

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as the countryside lay
stunned, at the hour

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of the wolf and the
vole, in a railroad car,

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the generals met and
put their weapons down.

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Like spring and
buzz, as word passed

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over all the pocked
and riven ground

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and underground, now the
nation sat in a gilded hall,

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divining what they'd
keep of what they'd won.

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And so their armies
could be done with war,

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and soldiers trickled
home to study peace.

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But they all gardens
grew a tough new weed.

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And the old lives didn't
fit as they had before.

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And where they'd been the
dream, a stranger's face.

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And where they'd been the
war, an empty sleeve."

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