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From the second section of
the book, two poems from that.

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The first is the beginning
poem from that section.

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I Go Back to May 1937.

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I see them standing at the
formal gates of their colleges.

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I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch,

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the red tiles glinting
like bent plates of blood

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behind his head.

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I see my mother with a few
light books at her hip,

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standing at the pillar
made of tiny bricks

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with a wrought iron gate
still open behind her,

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its solid tips black
in the May air.

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They are about to graduate.

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They are about to get
married, they're kids.

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They are dumb, all they
know is they're innocent.

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They would never hurt anybody.

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I want to go up to them
and say, stop, don't do it.

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She's the wrong woman.

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He's the wrong man.

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You are going to do things you
cannot imagine you would ever

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do.

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You are going to do
bad things to children.

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You are going to suffer in
ways you never heard of.

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You are going to want to die.

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I want to go up to them there
in the late May sunlight

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and say it.

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Her hungry, pretty blank
face turning to me.

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Her pitiful, beautiful,
untouched body.

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His elegant, handsome,
blind face turning to me.

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His pitiful, beautiful,
untouched body,

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but I don't do it.

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I want to live.

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I take them up like the male
and female paper dolls and bang

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them together at the hips like
chips of flint, as if to strike

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sparks from them.

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I say, do what you are going
to do and I will tell about it.

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