WEBVTT

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Most of my poems, if you know my
poems, you'll know are longer,

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and most of them,
even the short ones,

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started off as two
or three pages.

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And this one was this
very long narrative.

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And I cut it down to
about 11, 12 lines.

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"The Museum of Work."

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"Black high-topped
leather boots as

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new as when a Polish
soldier broke them in,

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September, 1939, running
toward a German tank,

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then wised up and
ran back home and hid

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them under the chicken coop.

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His son wore them
across the ocean.

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They walked him to school.

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They pushed the pedal
of a big dump truck.

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And in those boots, he bought
three more trucks, then sat

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for 40 years in a cramped
office like an American

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doing the numbers
that made the money we

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call the great
American success story.

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A pair of boots--

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humiliated in war and redeemed
by work now on display

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in the museum of work
next to the ladders.

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