WEBVTT

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So I'm going to
read two more poems.

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And where are we?

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Think it's OK.

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So one is for my dad.

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And as some of you
knew him you know

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that he helped with some
of the work of this place.

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And I'm very proud of that fact.

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Even though I teach at a
competing program, St. Mary's.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Which I will say
is a great program.

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No.

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I do love that you have
a Poetry Center so much

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and the program here.

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And I think you're very
lucky to have each other.

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So this was when my dad
had his heart surgery.

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And the first poem I read
was about his sleeping

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under the new big
scar like America.

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And so this was
before the big scar.

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And he was in intensive
care and he asked

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if I would write him a poem.

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And I said, well Dad,
give me the first line.

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And he said, what is
the meaning of all this.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I wrote the poem from that.

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Till It Finishes What It Does.

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Where is the meaning?

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The old man asked.

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The night nurse had put on
his little frowning socks.

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He lay on his life
bed in the dusk,

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holding the tail of a comet.

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Outside the hospital creosote.

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The cactus wren is
such a good packer.

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Granite wild at
the hands of quartz

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rose in the saddle
of the mountains.

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I'm writing this with
a pharmaceutical pen

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at the nexus of
science and magic.

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When all the visitors
had left the room,

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the tiny valve of the pig
beat inside our father's heart

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like the spokes of the
sun disk in a hieroglyph

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above the squiggly river
symbol like meaning

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and its tributaries,
nothingness and art.

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Active one, the animal
is not your emissary.

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It is not the
decoration you saw it.

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Its beauty runs
without your will.

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It drives the mystical heart.

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