WEBVTT

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I'm going to read
four more poems,

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cheating slightly because one of
them is sort of a double poem.

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It's the title poem
called Oblique Prayer.

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The book itself is
called Oblique Prayers.

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It's plural.

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And this is a Oblique
Prayer, singular.

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And it has a kind of
pendant called the antiphon.

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Oblique prayer.

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Not the profound dark night of
the soul and not the austere

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desert to scorch
the heart at noon,

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grip the mind in teeth
of ice at evening.

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But gray, a place
without clear outlines.

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The air heavy and thick.

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The soft ground clogging
my feet if I walk, sucking

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them downwards if I stand.

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Have you been here?

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Is it a part of humanness
to enter no man's land?

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I can remember.

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Is it asking you that
makes me remember?

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Even here, the
blessed light that

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caressed the world before
I stumbled into this place

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of mere not- darkness.

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