WEBVTT

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OK, one poem about the horrors
and then I'll lighten it up.

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This is called "The Butcher,
Borges, What a Shock."

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It's after Pascal's Sphere
by Jorge Luis Borges.

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"What a jewel the view is
from the furnished room.

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Flashing with red,
green, and orange traffic

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lights, that's dancing and
it sings as a general sound.

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What a crystal air is,
metrical in structure,

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clear in the open work,
burning at its joints,

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and moving in its bodies
ordered everywhere

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as forces, products
in pure chance.

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What an honor to be
in it even as a floor.

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But I had to look away
and down the open trap

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door in the center of the
room into the cellar hole

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where I have not yet fallen.

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A man-faced, bat-winged
worm looked up from his work

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on my love's corpse falling,
his grin foul with his lights

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and said, so what?

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Faller, I come in the works
of your love's wounds foaming.

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My sperm are his worms.

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Love, I have known you and your
change from spring to garbage.

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So I ask you, why is
the world so beautiful?

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It has to be all sex that
make us want it here.

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Against the worm's brief,
I am the root and teeth.

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What you dream I am.

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You are the meat,
fly if you can.

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So beget sons against death,
get real estates against decay,

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and praise physical glory.

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The stars above
the roof are there

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as God's dust at the
center of this sphere whose

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edge is nowhere."

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That as I said is from Pascal's
Sphere by Jorge Luis Borges.

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So now I'll get back
to the working life.

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Somebody asked me to recite
a poem about working.

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And reciting working poems
during a time of recession

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is a bit obscene.

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But I just say to people
who are out of work

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that working is lousy too.

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