WEBVTT

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So when I stepped off the plane
and arrived here yesterday,

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I was wearing one of those vests
with a lot of pockets in it,

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which I discovered is the
perfect way for a woman

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not to have to carry a purse.

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And I'd been traveling around
wearing that vest for quite

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a few years.

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And one day, I looked
at it hanging over

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the chair in my room, as it
often is, and it became a poem.

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And thus it is.

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You look at something
110 times, and the 111th,

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it suddenly says, oh, I
have something to say.

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"Vest."

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"I put on again the
vest of many pockets.

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It is easy to forget which
holds the reading glasses, which

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the small pen, which the house
keys, the compass and whistle,

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the passport.

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To forget at last for weeks
even the pocket holding

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the day of digging a place
for my sister's ashes,

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the one holding the
day where someone

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will soon enough put my own.

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To misplace the pocket of
touching the walls at Auschwitz

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would seem impossible.

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It is not.

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To misplace, for a decade,
the pocket of tears.

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I rummage and rummage--

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transfers for Munich,
for Melbourne, to Oslo.

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A receipt for a Singapore kopi.

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A device holding music--

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Bach, Garcia,
Richter, Porter, Part.

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A woman long dead now
gave me, when I told her

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I could not sing, a kazoo.

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Now in a pocket.

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Somewhere, a pocket
holding a Steinway.

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Somewhere, a pocket holding a
packet of salt. Borgesian vest,

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Oxford English Dictionary
vest with a magnifying glass

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tucked inside one snapped-closed
pocket, Wikipedia vest, Rosetta

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vest, enigma vest of decoding.

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How is it one person can carry
your weight for a lifetime, one

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person slip into your
open arms for a lifetime?

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Who was given the world,
and hunted for tissues,

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for chapstick."

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