WEBVTT

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So this one's in seven
parts, and it's called Snow.

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And it's from my
mother-in-law Margaret Falk,

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who was an immigrant born in
Vienna, Austria, Austrian Jew,

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whose family died
in the Holocaust,

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but who gathered up enough money
to send her to, what was then,

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the Dutch Indies Indonesia.

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And she was sent
to Java because she

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had Dutch relatives in
Java, who the Nazis,

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said, well, if you have
someone to, you can work

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and you can get papers.

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Then we'll let you leave and you
can go to Java, which she did.

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And she was there
three years, I think,

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before the Japanese
occupied those islands.

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And then she was put in a
prisoner of war camp for almost

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four years, 3 and 1/2 years.

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So she lived through
hell several times over.

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So this is a poem for her.

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Snow.

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Oh, and one note.

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So I use a German phrase--

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so she spoke German, of
course, growing up in Austria.

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And she says at one point or
in the poem, du bist verrückt,

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which means you're crazy.

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Snow.

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Czechoslovakia.

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Blooming in your
childhood in the 30s,

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there was a field so
white in early June.

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Your grandmother said a
frantic snow must have fallen

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while you and Walter slept.

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A miracle, she said.

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A celestial tablecloth
set with careful lace

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by Queen Anne herself.

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Did you talk of Vienna
with your blonde playmates,

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the local villagers as
you, your older sister,

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and younger brother
gathered jars

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of gooseberries for late tea?

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Do you remember which
children turned away

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when the Nazis came.

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when the white field
hardened its mantle,

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and your farmhouse
went up in flames

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Two.

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Vienna.

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The snow falls
inside a glass dome.

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It looks like dandruff,
your brother's jokes.

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You have no mother to scold him.

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So you cut his shoulder
saying, Walter, or Walter,

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du bist verrückt.

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The snow falls like logic from--

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no.

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The snow swirls like memory.

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The boy, the chimney
sweep inside the dome

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will lose his head.

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Three.

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Java.

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Three years, almost
four, in the prison camp.

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The jungle closing in
the Japanese guards

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swollen with hate
with the yeast of fear

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with the humid swelter
of the spiraling war.

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In green canopies
overhead, monkeys howling,

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army ants on the march,
maggots in the bread.

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Live snow, you think.

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Then you abandon
religion for a while.

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Then you pray.

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Four.

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New York.

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The Bronx delivers itself
over to winter like a novice

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taking the veil.

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But the weather is blasphemous,
wicked in its relentless futile

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devotions.

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Why are you still alive?

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Your mother, father, brother,
sister, brother-in-law,

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and nephew, all dead.

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Bracing yourself
against the sleet,

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your belly grown
round is a balloon,

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you push on to the subway.

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Your eyelashes lattice
with snowflakes.

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Your footsteps effaced.

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Your breath exhaling ghosts.

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Five.

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Laguna Hills.

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Seizure World,
your son calls it.

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It's called Leisure World.

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Seizure World,
your son calls it.

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This place of palm
tree gentility,

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Southern California's oasis
for gray haired denizens

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for the living.

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From here, you can see
our Alps 50 miles north

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where Mount Baldy points
towards a vacant heaven.

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Some of your friends,
survivors too, have moved out.

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The locked gates, you say,
disturb them, reminding them

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of the German camps.

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But you like it here.

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The group bus tours of
Laughlin and Las Vegas

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where you clutch your
purse in the great gambling

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halls suspicious of luck.

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Six.

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Mount Baldy.

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Your eldest granddaughter
bears your likeness,

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most the green eyes,
aquiline nose, sensual lips.

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In college now, with the
world history paper due,

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she asks you about
the war and you weep.

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A heavy silence darkens
our Thanksgiving table.

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Outside, snow laden winds lash
themselves against the windows.

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The room stands still as if
cupped in the eye of a tornado.

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Then hailstone's
tiny fists awaken us.

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Seven.

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Hear.

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Some sorrows in
life bloom slowly

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into the six pointed
stars of wisdom.

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Others slow the
blood or freeze it.

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Some sorrows cannot salvage the
soul from a lifelong torment

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of nightmares.

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Your shock of white
hair is beautiful.

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Beyond us, beyond
the interior world,

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the snow is as guileless
as time or fate

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as it drifts down to
the frozen ground.

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A light crossing your
face dissolves into tears.

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And those tears are mine, too.

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Though I do not choose them.

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Just as the beating heart, that
brave and vulnerable clock,

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does not choose when or
where or why it must stop.

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Thank you.

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