WEBVTT

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I'll read two more poems,
poems not from that

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sequence, another
one with water in it.

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I wanted to write a
poem of nostalgia,

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but I'm not sure if
that's possible-- well, I

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guess it is possible, but
I wasn't able to do it.

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And one of the things
that I found out

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is that if you look hard at any
memory or anything in the past

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that you want to
be nostalgic about,

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you can't be nostalgic
about it anymore.

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I mean, once you look at it
hard you see all kinds of things

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that you had
conveniently forgotten.

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"The Waterfall"

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Meeting after 20 years apart,
I ask my friend to give me back

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myself at 19, but
he can't or won't.

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Sunny, he says, and
quick to speak your mind.

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Then he asks if
he has aged, if he

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looks the same, who had always
seemed so satisfied past need,

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past harm.

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At every stop we
stare at each other,

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returning to the other's face
as though it were a wind rocked

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pond we hope will clear.

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And slowly as we spiral up the
mountain looking for landmarks,

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the road a narrow shelf
on the wooded slopes,

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I realize he's terrified of me.

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And since he cannot yet know
who I am, began to see myself,

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as I was then, implacable.

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But that's not the
word he flung at me

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beside the shaded pool,
the blanket smoothed,

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the picnic barely opened.

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That was years ago.

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Now, we have the usual
pleasantries, trade

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photographs, his family
and mine, they are fixed,

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improbable faces.

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Eventually we find the general
store, the left turn fork,

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the hidden waterfall
still battering the rocks,

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and the ease of
recognition makes me old.

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Standing close enough
to feel the spray,

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looking up at the falls, its
powerful, inexhaustible rush

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of water, I think that art has
ruined my life, fraught as it

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is with what's exceptional.

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But that's not true.

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At the start, at 19, I wanted
it all, every exhilaration,

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every grief.

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Acquisitive was what he said

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How could I have hurt him?

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Such a new candle just
lit, burning, burning.

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[APPLAUSE]

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