WEBVTT

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I don't read this poem a lot.

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And then I feel like someone in
one of the class visits today

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sort of like put me
on a dare to do it.

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So if I start bombing the set
around this portion of it,

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that's why.

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Place way too much
pressure on myself.

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It's called "Correction."

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"Correction.

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The question of whether
the idea of America is dead

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is not a question.

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A question by its
definition does not

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cease to exist in
the language you hear

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spoken by those who ask it.

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This is why the dead, if we
say where the living belong

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or the dead, this is why
the dead are not a question.

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Now think of a fire.

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Think of it eating its
way across a battlefield.

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And it's breathing the air for
which the dead no longer exist.

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Now think of it searching the
field for a good place to die.

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The question of whether
the fire is dead

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is not a question because the
question of whether the fire is

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alive still exists in
the language you hear

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spoken by those who ask it.

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This is why, in
America, the idea

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of a fire is you eat more
air than the dead can expire

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or else the Earth you can't
stomach devours you too.

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In America, the
idea of a fire is

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what you consume is
where you belong,

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which is why where the
Earth belongs is the dead

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and why the only good place to
die is where the idea of a fire

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does not cease to exist in
the language you hear spoken

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by those who ask it.

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Now my brother waits for me on
the other side of the river,

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watching the old war
factory burn to the ground.

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He once called across
to ask if I worry.

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Is a man catching fire
without warning, he said, all

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you really think we
inherit from our father?

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And I told him to ask me
once again in our language.

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Before this year
is done, he said,

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do I wake up at the end of town?

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Is my body thrown through
the windshield of my car?

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That's when the
country will long

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to say I'm finished, when
all that's ours is all a man

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leaves us and all we continue
is his reign over dirt.

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And that's when my brother
will cross the river

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like a fire eating its way
across the battlefield.

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How I wonder, he'll say, if
a family is waiting for me

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a few years down the road."

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