WEBVTT

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I want to read from
the last published book

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and then end with some
poems that have not yet

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been collected, and after
that poem about a bird,

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I want to read a poem
called Birdie, which was

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the name of an aunt of mine.

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You don't think
anything that I know of.

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But as for me when
I think of you,

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I don't know how many
of you there are.

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And I suppose you thought
there was just the one.

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How many times you
may have been born

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as my father's other sisters
would say in your body.

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Nobody is interested in things
like that in the family.

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Somebody wrote down
though that you was born

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one time on April 20, 1874.

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So that my grandmother
at that occasion was 13.

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And the hardest thing to believe
in that account as I think

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of it is that she was
ever 13 years old.

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The way we grew up to hide
things from each other.

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So she had a little
baby at that age.

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And that was you, Birdie.

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That was one of you.

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Did you know?

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It presents a different
picture of my grandmother

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from the one I
was brought up to.

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That was the you
she had when she

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was 13, which goes a
long way to explain

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her Puritanism and
your gypsy earrings

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and all the withered
children who came after

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and their scorn of your bright
colors and your loud heart.

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And maybe even your son who
was delicate and an artist

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and painted heads of
Jesus on church walls

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where they crumbled
and could not be moved.

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And your having a good
time and dying in Arizona.

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Except that as everybody
knew that you was nothing

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but a mistake in the writing.

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And the real Birdie came along
when grandma was into her 20s.

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And she had her first
born, a little baby girl,

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which explains nothing.

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Puritanism, earrings, the
children who came after,

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your son the frail artist,
the crumbling heads

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of Jesus, for having a good
time and dying in Arizona,

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that was the you I met
one morning in summer whom

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nobody could explain
for you was different.

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Inviting all them so
unexpected and not

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heard of for so long, your
own mother, younger brother,

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younger sisters, new
nephew to breakfast,

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laughing and waving your
hands with all the rings.

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And them not
listening, saying they

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was in a hurry to drive
farther and see the family.

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And you going on telling them
everything there was to eat.

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