WEBVTT

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The other thing I
share with this class

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today is that since
I can't come up

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with any of the
titles on my own,

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I also just take
them from music.

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So there's a song called "If
You Go Away," and surprisingly,

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this poem is called
"If You Go Away."

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In fact, the whole book
is named after a song,

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but we'll get to that.

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"If You Go Away."

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"When death finds me if
there'd be sight at all,

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let me see as the torn coyote
does, turning its head briefly,

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looking not with understanding
but recognition that where

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the flesh falls open around
a wound that more resembles

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the marsh violets' petals,
that hard-to-detect

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at first darkening
that happens soft,

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steadily toward the
flower's throat.

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Why not let go of
it, I used to think,

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meaning that instinct by
which the body shields itself

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from what threatens
it unexpectedly.

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A fist, the next so-called
unbearable question

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that's bearable after all.

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Voila.

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Surprise.

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I know death's an abstraction,
but I prefer a shape to things,

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though the shapes
are changeable.

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In my latest version, death
is a young man with a habit

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for using one side of his mouth
to blow his hair slightly up

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from his brow while with the
other half he mutters things

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like, 'Each time I leave
it's like I've left forever.'

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Behind him, stray
cabbage moths lifting up

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from catalpas blossoms make it
seem as if one bloom had flown

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free from the others,
fluttering mirror

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from a clutch of still ones.

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There's a kind of love
that doesn't extend itself

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both ways between
two people equally

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because it doesn't have to."

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