WEBVTT

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Title to this next poem is
from an issue of Ladies' Home

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Journal, it happens
to be a 1915 issue,

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and it was the headline to an
article about the invention

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of electricity.

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You Will Think This Is a Dream.

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Hypnotized, it leaps
through coiled metal

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to drive cauldrons wild
in a parenthesis of flame.

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Stroke the wall and
daylight breaks.

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Twist a dial, summer
purrs through.

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With pocket inferno,
light a cigarette

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from the succinct chaos with
which the universe began.

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But in night's other country,
where time is mirage,

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fire was an animal whose
gold flanks scorched

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and whose galloping devoured
grasslands as it fled.

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No one tamed lions, no one
dreamed of narrowing frenzy

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in its flight.

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How shall I explain
to my ancient self

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the invisible fires we train
now as pets, let alone the genie

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locked in all living things?

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How explain the hibiscus,
geranium, and lily

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thriving in tropical deceit
at my window, beyond which

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the park lies drab and frozen?

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In a landscape invisible
in time and space,

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despite both my ignorance
and the auroras of fatigue,

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I can aim the enemy,
I can pipette the sun.

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To the lily it's Africa,
rampant heat and showers.

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But more than glass protects
the hothouse flowers.

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