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Take care shopping, he said.

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When a man dies, he does not
die just of the disease he has.

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He dies of his whole life.

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But the epigraph for
this poem, take care.

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Could you read a little louder?

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Yeah.

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I'm sorry.

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I promise to do that.

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Our neighbor, Laura Foley,
used to love to tell us

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every spring when we
returned from work

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in richer provinces, the
season's roster of disease,

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bereavement, loss.

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And all her stars were
ill and all her ailments

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worth detailing.

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We were young and getting
up into the world.

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We feigned a gracious
interest when

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she spoke, but did a slew
of wicked imitations out

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of earshot.

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Finally, her bitterness drove
off even such listeners as we.

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And one by one, the winters
nailed more cold into her house

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until the decade crippled
her and she was dead.

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Her presence had been
tiresome, fearless, negative.

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And there was little range
of generosity in anything

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she said.

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But now that I have
lost my certainty

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and spent my spirit in
a waste of one romance,

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I think enumerations have their
place, descriptive of what

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keeps on keeping
on, for dying is

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nothing simple, nothing single.

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And the records
of the odd demises

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(stone inside an organ,
obstacles to brook, a pump that

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stops, some cells that won't,
the fevers making mockeries

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of lust) our signatures
of lively interest,

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they presuppose a life to lose.

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And if the love of life's an
art, and art is difficult,

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then we were less
than laymen at it.

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Easy come is all
the layman knows.

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I mean that maybe Laura
Foley loved life more,

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who kept so keen an
eye on how it goes.

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