WEBVTT

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Gonna read three or more poems.

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This one's called
"For the Year,"

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and we're just past
the turn of the year.

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"If I did not know,
I could not tell

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by watching the blue sky with
not a cloud moving across it

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in the still morning above the
flying songs of the thrushes,

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that in these unseen hours
of clear daylight, one more

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year even now is leaving us.

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One more year, one more decade,
wherever it is that they go,

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once they have been here.

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And we waited up for them.

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I stood in a friend's house
high on a hill looking out

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over the city to the
sea 10 years ago.

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And my ears rang
with the midnight.

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Fireworks rising
from the lit streets

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into that time with its stars.

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My hair was still dark.

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I did not know you.

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And in the morning,
both the puppies barked,

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and the tiles had come for the
new roof we are living under.

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It is already a year now
since we sat here with friends

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by candlelight, talking
of childhoods risen

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at last from hiding until we
saw that the candles had burned

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past the moment we
had been waiting for,

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and already it had slipped
through our words and hands

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and was gone.

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And the year was new
without our having

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seen how it happened,
bringing with it far

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from our sight, this
whole day wherever

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it is going now as we watch it
together here in the morning."

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