WEBVTT

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What happened after that was,
again, the poems came in spurts

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and fits and I
began writing poetry

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I began to refer to
as the Paradise Poems

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because they were all--

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the setting of all these
poems wasn't paradise, either

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lost or bound to be
lost, and of course, I

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can look at it now
and say yes, these

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were the poems
about losing a house

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and trying to
rebuild one's life.

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But at that time, I was working
through the metaphors of them.

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I'd like to read you
one-- actually we're

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very close to this day
now, called "All Souls."

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"All Souls."

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"Starting up behind
them, all the

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voices of those they had named;
mink, gander, and marmoset,

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crow and cockatiel.

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Even the duck-billed platypus,
of late so quiet in its bed,

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sent out a feeble cry signifying
grief and confusion, et cetera.

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Of course the world
had changed for good,

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as it would from
now on every day,

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with every twitch and blink.

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Now that change
was de rigeur, man

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would discover
desire, then yearn

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for what he would learn
to call distraction.

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This was the true loss.

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And yet, in that first
unchanging instant,

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the two souls standing outside
the gates, no more than a

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break in the hedge; how
had they missed it?--

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were not thinking.

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Already the din was fading.

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Before them, a silence larger
than all their ignorance

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yawned, and this, they
walked into until it

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was all they knew.

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In time they hunkered
down to business,

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filling the world with sighs--

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these anonymous,
pompous creatures,

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heads tilted as if
straining to make up

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the words to a song played
long ago, in a foreign land."

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