WEBVTT

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This is another one from--

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written later, but from
that New York period.

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My friends were right.

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I didn't know anybody.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It took me a while to.

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So I roamed the
city a great deal.

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This is called "Paradise."

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In a neighborhood once
called Hell's Kitchen,

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where the beggar claimed to
be playing Nero's fiddle,

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while the city burned
in midsummer heat, where

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a lady barber who called
herself Cleopatra wielded

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the scissors of
fate over my head,

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threatening to cut
off my ears and nose,

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where the man and a
woman went walking

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naked in one of the dark
side streets of dawn.

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I must be dreaming,
I told myself.

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It was like meeting
a couple of sphinxes.

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I expected them to have
wings, bodies of lions,

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him with his wildly
tattooed chest,

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her with her huge
dangling breasts.

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It happened so quickly
and so long ago.

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You know that time
just before the day

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breaks when one
yearns to lie down

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in cool sheets in a room with
shades drawn, the hour when

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the beautiful suicides lying
side by side in the morgue

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get up and walk out into the
first light, the curtains

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of cheap hotels flying out
of windows like seagulls.

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But everything else, quiet,
steam rising out of the subway

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gratings, bodies glistening
with sweat, madness,

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and you might even
say, paradise.

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