WEBVTT

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I never know what to do next,
but I will tell you something.

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This is for someone who's here.

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I was reading to high
schools in California

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a few years ago, about the time
that registration for the draft

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began again, and these students
were listening to poetry

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and they were listening to
me talk about Latin America

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and they were very sweet.

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And then they would put up
their hand and say, Miss Forche,

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should we register
for the draft?

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And I said, well, you remember.

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I said, I can't really
tell you what to do,

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but I can direct you and
your memory in the matter,

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and you will have to
ponder this for yourself.

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So we started talking
about Vietnam,

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and I got these sort of
empty looks, and they said,

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Miss Forche, we were four years
old when the Vietnam War ended

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and we don't remember anything.

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I remember once my mom
said something about it,

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but it was sort of like that.

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And I said, what
years were you born?

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And it turns out
that some of them

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were born after President
Kennedy was killed,

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and I didn't think
anyone was that young

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who was going to school,
because I had lost track of time

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and I thought anyone
who's wearing blue jeans

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must be all about the same age.

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I had become an old person.

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So I said well, I don't
know how to help you,

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but I will tell you that you
should read and think very

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carefully and so on, so on.

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So I wrote a poem for them.

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I thought, it's time.

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I have become an
old person and now I

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have to write a poem
for the young ones who

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are coming of age now.

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And so I decided to write
one as a member of what

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I call my generation,
and I decided

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to call that anyone, male or
female, who was of draft age

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any time during the Vietnam War.

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So that's from that
to this new ones, who

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were born after President
Kennedy was killed.

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It's called Selective Service.

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And the other thing, I guess
you have mountains here

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so I don't have to
worry about this one.

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In California also I use
an image of snow angels,

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you know the kids
who lie on the ground

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and make wings and things, and
I got blank looks on that too.

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We rise from the snow where
we've lain on our backs

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and flown like children, from
the imprint of perfect wings

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and cold gowns, and
we stagger together,

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wine breath, into town where
our people are building

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their armies again, short
years after body bags,

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after burnings.

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There is a man I've
come to love after 30,

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and we have our rituals of
coffee, of airports, regret.

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After love, we smoke and
sleep with magazines,

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two shot glasses on the black
and white collapse of ours.

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In what time do we live that it
is too late to have children?

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In what place that we consider
the various ways to leave?

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There is no list long enough
for a selective service card

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shriveling under a match,
the prison that comes of it,

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a flag in the wind
eaten from its pole,

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and boys sent back
in trash bags.

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We'll tell you.

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You were at that time
learning fractions.

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We'll tell you about fractions.

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Half of us are dead
or quiet or lost.

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Let them speak for themselves.

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We lie down in the
fields and leave

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behind the corpses of angels.

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[APPLAUSE]

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