WEBVTT

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We'll finish off
these Vietnam poems

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and then I'll go to some others.

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This is called The Detective.

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I lie on my daughter's body
to hold her in the Earth

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but she won't stay.

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She rises, lifting
me with her as

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if she were air, and not some
remnant of failed re-education

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in a Cambodian mass grave.

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We rise till I wake.

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I sit up, turn on
the lamp and stare

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at the photo of the
girl who died yesterday,

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at her Vietnamese mother
and her American father.

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Jewel van duc Thompson,
murdered in Springfield, Ohio

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in her 18th year,
gone the day she

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was born like in the cartoons
when somebody rolls up

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the road that stretches
into the horizon

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and the TV's screen goes black.

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Go home, captain, the cop said
yesterday as he gripped my hand

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and hauled himself up from the
ditch where they'd found her,

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like Persephone climbing from
the underworld one more time,

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his eyes bright, the hunger
for life and a good time

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riding his back like a jockey.

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Death is a vacation, I answered.

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Then my hand was
free and I could

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see how she was thrown from the
highway down the embankment.

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Where are art and
rationality when it counted?

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I thought-- always
around the corner

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from somebody else's street.

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Even the ice cream man
never ever made your block,

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though you could hear the bells,
though you could feel the chill

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like a shock those hot
days, when your company beat

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the bushes, when you bit into
death's chocolate covered

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center and froze...

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I turn off the lamp and
lie still in the dark.

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Somewhere in time it is 1968.

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I am bending over a
wounded man with my knife.

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My company calls me
the angel of mercy.

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I don't remember
yesterday and there

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is no tomorrow, there is only
the moment the knife descends

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from the equatorial dark,

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only a step across the
Cambodian border from Vietnam

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to search and destroy the enemy.

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But it is just a short time
till the enemy discovers me

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and I would die, but for
the woman who takes me

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to the border, who crosses
with me from the underworld

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back to the underworld.

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I open the curtain.

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Outside, the early morning
is spinning, gathering speed

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and moving down the
street like a whirlwind.

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I pull the curtain
shut again and switch

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on my tape of the
murderer's confession,

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hear the faint raspy voice
playing and replaying itself.

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It was Saturday night.

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She stood alone at the bus stop.

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When she took the first
step toward my car,

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I dropped the key once, twice.

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She smiled, she picked it up.

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I lie back on the bed while
the voice wears itself out.

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Yes, I think you live for
a while, you get tired,

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you walk the road into the
interior, and never come back.

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You disappear the way
the woman and your child

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disappear into Cambodia
and the pink light of dawn,

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early April 1975.

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You say you'll go
back, but you never do.

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Springfield, Phnom Penh.

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So many thousands of miles
between a lie and the truth.

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No, just a step.

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The murderer's voice
rises, become shrill.

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Man, he says, is it wrong
to do what is necessary?

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I switch off the tape.

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Each time I lie down I
think I won't get up again.

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I sing through the
bed, the floor,

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and out the other
side of the Earth.

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There my daughter denounces me.

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She turns me back to the
muddy border of forgiveness.

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I get up, dress quickly,
then open the curtain wide.

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At the door I put
my hand on the knob,

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hesitate, then step
out into sunlight.

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I get into the car, lift the
key to the ignition, drop it.

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My hand is shaking.

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I look into the back seat.

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The 20th century
is there, wearing

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a necklace of
grenades that glitters

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against this black skin.

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I stare, see the pins
have all been pulled.

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Drive, says the voice.

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I turn to the wheel,
imagine the explosions,

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house after house disintegrating
in flames, but all is silent.

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People go on with their lives on
this day that is 100 years long

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on this sad, red
balloon of a planet,

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the air escaping from it
like the hot, sour breath

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of a child.

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[APPLAUSE]

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