WEBVTT

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I should probably make up
a program ahead of time,

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but I hardly ever do.

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Here's a poem called "Lady."

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This is another poem
that is about someone

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whom I knew in Vermont.

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Knew her quite well.

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"Lady" is the name of the poem.

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"Lady, they calls me.

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Lady, and they always
has my whole life long,

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and I hated it.

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God how I hated it.

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You know?

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But you can't go hating on
a thing like that forever.

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One time I says, what the
hell's the difference?

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Now they call me Lady same
as ever, and that's OK.

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Now my belly don't even
twitch like it used to.

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Hating.

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That's for those other
downcountry folk.

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That's for your city folk.

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What does it get them?

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Gut ache.

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Anybody knows that.

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Well, what I got is
this nice old house now.

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Big barn and the shed, first
rate metal, some fair hill

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pasture, and a wood lot that's
good enough for what I need.

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And my horses, my Arabians.

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Every one bred by
my own stallion.

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Yes, and them there
silver whoduddies

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you see on the mantel for
showing all over the state.

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I got me my Herefords
too, registered, 14 head,

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and I got me a job to make up
what the horses and beef won't

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bring.

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Down to the hospital
in Waterbury,

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you know, the mental hospital.

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Don't get the idea I'm one of
those movie battleaxe types,

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neither.

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I'm not.

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I work at the ward for the
chronics on the midnight shift.

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And there's a good lot of
them poor bastards in there as

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can't sleep when it comes
night, and I know why.

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Believe me, I know why.

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I treat them right.

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I talk to them and make
them tell me their stories,

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and then sometimes
they can sleep.

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Sometimes.

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Then I come home and do my
chores and sleep myself.

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Later I make hay or mend
fence or tend to poles

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or whatever needs doing.

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I got me a Ford 3,000 tractor,
a bailer, a mower, side-rake,

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a Dodge two ton platform truck,
and when I need something else,

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like a tedder or a
teakle rig I borrows it.

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We're neighborly around here.

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We have to be.

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Why we switch off labor
for all our big jobs,

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yes sir, and I do my share.

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One time I was
spreading manure down

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in the lower pasture
next to spruces.

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It was late, see, past
sundown, because I can tell you

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I got to run 70 minutes to
the hour to work this place.

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And of course, that had to
be the time the damn spreader

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jams, so there's nothing
to do but throw out

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the stuff by hand.

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I was just climbing off of
the tractor with the dung

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fork in one hand when this old
she bear come out of the trees.

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Popped right out of
there, coming right at me,

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big as a spruce-oil kiln she
looked, and black as a stove.

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I whooped, let me tell
you, and threw my fork

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and climbed back on that
tractor in a kind of a hurry,

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breathing a mite hard.

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When I got back to
the barn I found

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I had more manure than
I started out with.

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I told Jasper the
next day, he owns

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that gone to Boston looking
place over the hill,

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with the bam-o-gilly
in the door yard.

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Jas, I says, I was plain scart.

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Scart of that old she bear.

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I shit my britches.

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Jas, he looked
straight and soft like.

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Lady, he says, I
don't blame you, none.

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If it was me I believe
I'd have shatten too.

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That's one thing, small,
that don't mean much.

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You asked me who I was.

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I'm Lady.

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I'm what some folk
might call uncommon.

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Respect, maybe.

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Well, I get along.

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A good neighbor
to good neighbors.

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There's all kinds living
around these mountains.

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I raise beef, a little, I raise
some damn fine horses here

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on this hilltop
farm, then I work out

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nights in the loony bin.

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That's all, mostly.

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Though sometimes it does
seem funny, don't it,

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the way things happen."

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[APPLAUSE]

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I should say perhaps that
a teakle rig in Vermont

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is a block and tackle.

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And bam-o-gilly is
a Balm of Gilead,

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which is a species
of poplar that grows

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in that part of the country.

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Well, I'll move forward
to some more recent poems.

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