WEBVTT

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This is the title poem of
that section, "Prisoners."

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"Though the road turn at last
to death's ordinary door,

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and we knock there,
ready to enter

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and it opens easily for us.

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Yet, all the long
journey we shall

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have gone in chains,
fed on knowledge-apples

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acrid and riddled with grubs.

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We taste other food that life,
like a charitable farm girl,

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holds out to us as we pass.

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But our mouths are puckered,
a taint of ash on the tongue.

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It's not joy that we've lost.

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Wildfire, it flares in
dark or shine as it will.

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What's gone is common
happiness, plain bread

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we could eat with the
old apple of knowledge.

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That old one, it
griped us sometimes,

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but it was firm, tart,
sometimes delectable.

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The ashen apple of these
days grew from poisoned soil.

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We are prisoners and
must eat our ration.

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All the long road in
chains, even if, after all,

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we come to death's
ordinary door,

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with time smiling its
ordinary, long ago smile."

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[APPLAUSE]

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