WEBVTT

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Here's another New
York poem, but it

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was written in the late 80s.

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Describes late 50s, when I first
came from Chicago to New York.

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At first, when I--

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we first lived in
New York for a year,

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and then we went to Chicago.

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And I finished high school there
and lived another two years.

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And I always wanted to go
back to New York by myself.

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Because I was a
little snob, you know,

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I wanted more jazz, more
art, more foreign movies,

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more bookstores, et
cetera, et cetera.

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And so I picked up and left.

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And despite my
friends telling me,

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you don't know
anybody in New York.

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What are you going
to do in New York?

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And so there was a party
for me the night before,

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and I remember I had a--

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it was an Oxford
University Press,

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a little book of
very delicate paper,

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of Dante's Divine Comedy .

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And there was a guy
there at the party

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who said, you have to read
that St. Thomas Aquinas,

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in order to understand Dante.

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So before leaving,
actually I was

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going to hitchhike to New York.

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Well, I'll describe it to you
as you'll see in the poem.

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But anyway, very
quickly, hitchhiking,

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I lost Dante and was stuck
with St. Thomas Aquinas for--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--Two months.

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So this is the setting of
this poem, called St. Thomas

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Aquinas.

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"I left parts of
myself everywhere,

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the way absent minded people
leave gloves and umbrellas

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whose colors are sad from
dispensing so much bad luck.

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I was on a park bench, asleep.

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It was like the art
of ancient Egypt.

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I didn't wish to disturb myself.

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I made my long shadow
take the evening train.

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We give death to a child,
when we give it a doll,

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said the woman who
had read Djuna Barnes.

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We whispered all night.

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She had traveled
to darkest Africa.

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She had many stories to
tell about the jungle.

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I was already in New
York, looking for work.

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It was raining as
in the days of Noah.

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I stood in many doorways
in that great city.

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Once, I asked a man in
tuxedo for a cigarette.

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He gave me a frightened look
and stepped out into the rain.

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Since man naturally
desires happiness,

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according to St.
Thomas Aquinas, who

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gave irrefutable proof of
God's existence and purpose,

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I loaded trucks in
the garbage center.

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Me and a black man stole
a woman's red dress.

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It was of silk.

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It shimmered.

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Upon a gloomy night, with all
our loving ardors on fire,

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we carried it down the long,
empty avenue, each holding one

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sleeve.

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The heat was
intolerable, causing

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many terrifying human faces
to come out of hiding.

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In the public
library reading room,

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there was a single ceiling
fan barely turning.

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I had the travels
of Herman Melville

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to serve me as a pillow.

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I was on a ghost ship with
its sails fully raised.

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I could see no land anywhere.

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The sea and its monsters
could not call me.

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I followed a saintly-looking
nurse into a doctor's office.

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We rushed past people with
eyes and ears bandaged.

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I'm a medieval
philosopher in exile,

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I explained to my
landlady that night.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And truly, I no longer
looked like myself.

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I wore glasses with a nasty
spider crack with over one eye.

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I stayed in the
movies all day long.

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A woman on the screen walked
through a bombed city,

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again and again.

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She wore army boots.

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Her legs were long and bare.

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It was cold, wherever she was.

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She had her back turned to me,
but I was in love with her.

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I expected to find wartime
Europe at the exit.

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It wasn't even snowing.

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Everyone I met wore a part of my
destiny, like a carnival mask.

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I'm Bartleby the Scrivener,
I told the Italian waiter.

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Me too, he replied.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I could see nothing
but overflowing ashtrays

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the human-faced flies
were busy examining."

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