WEBVTT

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When I was invited
to come to Arizona,

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one of the things
that I realized

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was that I haven't
read for a while.

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I'll tell you why
in a little while.

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I haven't read in
public, but you

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know that we're living
in very precarious times,

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precarious for our consciences.

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I experience a
feeling that I'm sure

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many of you experience, a
feeling of profound unease,

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and so I don't think we
can have poetry readings

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or discussions or
talks or panels

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or anything without
mentioning this

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and without saying
something about it.

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So I would like to read
a couple of poems now

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that arose from my
experiences in wars,

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and the most profound
experience for me

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of a conventional warfare was
in Beirut in 1983 and 1984.

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And I'd like to read
something that I called

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"Writing Kept Hidden"
because it took me

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20 years to write about Beirut.

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20 years, I couldn't do so.

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And so these are little poems.

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The first one,
"Writing Kept Hidden,"

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is about the time I was
in Beirut when the Marine

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barracks were blown
up by a truck bomb,

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and 257 Marines were
killed in that event.

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After the explosion, I went
over to the barracks, the ruins

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of the barracks
and walked around,

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and the roofs were blown off.

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The walls were blown away.

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The places where the
Marines had been sleeping--

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there were drawings on
the walls that the Marines

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had made themselves, and
they were very good drawings.

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So some of them were artists.

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And they had drawn themselves,
and they had drawn scenes

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from their lives.

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And they had put some obscene
language on the walls,

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and I won't talk about that.

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But I want to read to you a poem
that came out of walking around

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there, "Writing Kept Hidden."

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"The black fire of
ink on paper took

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hold of their souls,
incorporeal fire.

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There was no protection
this fire couldn't touch,

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nor darkness nor a moment.

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It lasted as long as a dream.

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It was no dream.

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Heteroglossia of
nervous shortwave,

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cloud of blown walls.

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In the barracks, those who
had sketched themselves

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in coal and smoke
became coal and smoke,

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and the living remained, linking
unknown things to the known--

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residue, scapular,
matchlight, name on a tongue.

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Then for an hour, the war slept,
and rain filled the cisterns

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with silence.

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Our windows faced east,
and on August evenings,

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the sky was a blue
no longer spoken."

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