WEBVTT

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Poems come from something
that happened last month,

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last year, 10 years ago.

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This took place
I don't know when

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in the '70s, when Gail
and I were traveling

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in what was then Yugoslavia.

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In this case, it's now Slovenia.

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I've tried to write this
poem over and over for years.

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Not over and over,
but maybe five times.

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Over and over.

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It's called "Slovenia."

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"I napped, woke, napped again,
and when the bus pulled over,

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woke again.

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Not a light to be seen, only
the dark and mostly starless

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sky above us.

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And on both sides of the road,
dark wooded walls that earlier

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were forest.

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You see them everywhere in
the Balkans, these women.

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Placid, ageless, dressed
from head to toe in black.

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She stood and
stepped off the bus.

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The driver waited.

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Individual trees emerged.

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They looked like shadows,
and not in rows, not a path

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to be seen anywhere
between them.

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Every so often, I see her
when I'm falling asleep.

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A robe of black entering
a forest equally black.

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And though I'm sure
there had to be

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someone, someplace in those
woods, waiting for her,

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still I gasp."