WEBVTT

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I'll start by reading
the longest poem first

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on the principle that one's
powers of concentration

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are greatest at the beginning.

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It's terrible getting a long
poem at the end of a reading

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when your concentration
is beginning to flag,

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and you just want short
little jokes or something.

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Haiku-- funny haiku.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is about a friend
of mine who had AIDS.

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This was written
about two years ago.

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At the time of his illness,
I was reading The Jesuits

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in North America
by Francis Parkman,

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a very good 19th-century
history of the Jesuit ministry--

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Jesuit missionaries in
Canada and the hardships

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that they suffered.

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And it's in a
weird way, anything

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that you read, if it
means anything to you,

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becomes a part of your
experience, gets mixed in.

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It became part of this poem
really without my meaning

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to be at all.

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So there's one or
two references.

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And they're not
difficult references,

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but I think it makes it
all clear if I say that.

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"Lament."

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Your dying was a
difficult enterprise.

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First, petty things
took up your energies--

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the small but clustering
duties of the sick, as

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irritant as the cough's
dry rhetoric, those

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hours of waiting for
pills, shot, X-ray, or test

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while you read novels
two a day, already

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with a kind of clumsy
stealth distanced you

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from the habits of your health.

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In hope still, courteous
still, but tired and thin,

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you tried to stay the
man that you had been,

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treating each symptom as a
mere mishap without import.

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But then the spinal tap.

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It brought a hard headache.

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And when night came, I heard you
wake up from the same bad dream

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every half hour with the same
short cry of mild outrage

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before immediately slipping
into the nightmare once again,

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empty of content but
the drip of pain.

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No respite followed.

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Though the nightmare ceased,
your cough grew thick and rich.

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Its strength increased.

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Four nights, and on the
fifth, we drove you down

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to the emergency room.

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That frown, that frown, I'd
never seen such rage on you

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before as when they wheeled
you through the swinging door

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for you knew rightly
they conveyed you

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from those normal pleasures
of the sun's kingdom

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the hedonistic body basks
within and takes for granted:

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summer on the skin,
sleep without break,

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the moderate taste of
tea in a dry mouth.

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You had gone on from me
as if your body sought out

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martyrdom in the far
Canada of a hospital room.

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Once there, you entered fully
the distress and long pale

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rigors of the wilderness.

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A gust of morphine hid you.

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Back in sight, you breathed
through a segmented tube--

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fat, white-- jammed
down your throat

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so that you could not speak.

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How thin the distance made you.

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In your cheek one day
appeared the true shape

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of your bone no longer padded.

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Still, your mind alone
explored this emptying,

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intermediate state for
what holds and rests

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were hidden in it.

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You wrote us messages
on a pad, amused

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at one time that you
had your nurse confused,

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who, seeing you reconciled
after four years

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with your gray father,
both of you in tears,

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asked if this was at
last your special friend,

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the one you waited
for until the end.

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She sings, you wrote,
a Philippine folk song

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to wake me in the morning.

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It is long and very pretty.

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Grabbing at detail to furnish
this bare ledge toured

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by the gale in which you
lay, bed restful as a knife,

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you tried, tried
hard to make of it

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a life thick with the
complicating circumstance

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your thoughts might fasten on.

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It had been chance
always till now

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that had filled up the
moment with live specifics,

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your hilarious
comment discovered

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as it went along and
fed laconic, quick,

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wherever it was led.

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You improvised upon
your own delight.

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I can remember when,
one summer night,

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we talked between
our sleeping bags

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below a molten field of
stars five years ago.

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I was so tickled by your mind's
light touch, I couldn't sleep.

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You made me laugh too
much, though I was tired

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and begged you to leave off.

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Now you were tired and yet
not tired enough, still hungry

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for the great world you
were losing steadily

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in no season of your choosing.

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And when at last the
whole death was assured,

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drugs having
failed, and when you

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had endured two weeks of
an abominable constraint,

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you faced it equably without
complaint and whimpering,

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but not at peace with it.

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You'd lived as if your
time was infinite.

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You were not ready
and not reconciled,

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feeling as
incompleted as a child

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till you had shown
the world what

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you could do in
some ambitious role

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to be worked through,
a role your need for it

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had half defined, but never
wholly even in your mind.

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You lacked the
necessary ruthlessness,

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the soaring meanness
that pinpoints success.

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We loved that lack of
self-love and your smile,

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rueful at your own silliness.

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Meanwhile, your lungs collapsed,
and the machine, unstrained,

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did all your breathing now.

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Nothing remained but
death by drowning

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on an inland sea of your
own fluids, which it seemed

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could be kindly
forestalled by drugs.

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Both could and would.

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Nothing was said, everything
understood, at least by us.

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Your own concerns
were not long term

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precisely when
they gave the shot.

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You made local
arrangements to the bed

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and pulled a pillow
round beside your head.

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And so you slept and died,
your skin gone gray, achieving

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your completeness in a way.

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Outdoors next day, I
was dizzy from a sense

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of being ejected with
some violence from vigil

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in a white and
distant spot where

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I was numb into
this garden plot,

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too warm, too close, and
not enough like pain.

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I was delivered into time again.

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The variations that I live
among where your long body too

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used to belong and where the
still bush is minutely active.

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You never thought your body was
attractive, though others did,

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and yet you trusted it and must
have loved its fickleness a bit

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since it was yours
and gave you what

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it could till, near the end,
it let you down for good,

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its blood hospitable to
those guests who took over

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by betraying it into the
greatest of its inconsistencies

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this difficult, tedious,
painful enterprise.

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[APPLAUSE]

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