WEBVTT

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Here's a set of
seven, more or less,

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autobiographical sonnets
written, oh, 20 years ago,

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longer, called
"The Broken Home."

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Crossing the street, I saw
the parents and the child

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at their window, gleaming like
fruit with evening's mild gold

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leaf.

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In a room on the floor
below, sunless, cooler--

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a brimming saucer of
wax, marbly and dim--

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I have lit what's
left of my life.

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I've thrown out yesterday's milk
and opened a book of maxims.

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The flame quickens.

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The word stirs.

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Tell me, tongue of fire, that
you and I are as real at least

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as the people upstairs.

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My father, who had
flown in World War I,

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might have continued to
invest his life in cloud banks

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well above Wall Street and wife.

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But the race was run below,
and the point was to win.

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Too late now, I make
out in his blue gaze,

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through the smoked
glass of being 36,

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the soul eclipsed by twin
black pupils, sex and business;

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time was money in those days.

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Each 13th year he married.

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When he died there were
already several chilled wives

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in sable orbit--

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rings, cars, permanent waves.

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We'd felt him warming
up for a green bride.

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He could afford it.

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He was in his "prime"
at three score ten.

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But money was not time.

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When my parents were younger
this was a popular act,

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a veiled woman would
leap from an electric,

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wine-dark car to the
steps of no matter what--

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the Senate or the Ritz Bar
--and bodily, at newsreel speed,

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attack no matter whom--

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Al Smith or Jose Maria
Sert or Clemenceau --veins

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standing out on her throat
as she yelled "War mongerer!

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Pig!

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Give us the vote!"

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And would have to be hauled
away in her hobble skirt.

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What had the man done?

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Oh, made history.

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Her business, he had implied,
was giving birth, tending

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the house, mending the socks.

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Always that same old story--

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Father Time and Mother Earth,
a marriage on the rocks.

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One afternoon,
red, satyr-thighed,

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Michael, the Irish setter,
had passionately lowered,

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led the child I
was to a shut door.

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Inside, blinds beat
sun from the bed.

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The green-gold room
throbs like a bruise.

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Under a sheet, clad in
taboos lay whom we sought,

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her hair undone, outspread,
and of a blackness

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found, if ever now, in old
engravings where the acid bit.

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I must have needed to
touch it or the whiteness--

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was she dead?

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Her eyes flew open,
startled strange and cold.

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The dog slumped to the floor.

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She reached for me.

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I fled.

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Tonight they have stepped
out onto the gravel.

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The party is over.

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It's the fall of 1931.

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They love each other still.

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She: Charlie, I
can't stand the pace.

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He: Come on, honey--
why, you'll bury us all!

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A lead soldier guards my
windowsill, khaki rifle,

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uniform, and face.

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Something in me grows
heavy, silvery, pliable.

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How intensely
people used to feel!

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Like metal poured at the
close of a proletarian novel,

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refined and glowing
from the crucible,

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I see those two hearts,
I'm afraid, still.

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Cool here in the graveyard
of good and evil,

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they are even so to
be honored and obeyed.

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Obeyed, at least, inversely.

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Thus I rarely buy a
newspaper, or vote.

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To do so, I have learned, is
to invite the tread of a stone

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guest within my house.

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Shooting this rusted
bolt, though, against him,

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I trust I am no less
time's child than some

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who on the heath impersonate
Poor Tom or on the barricades

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risked life and limb.

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Nor do I try to
keep a garden, only

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an avocado in a glass of water--

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roots pallid, jammed with air.

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And later, when the
small gilt leaves

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have grown fleshy and green,
I let them die, yes, yes,

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and start another.

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I am earth's no less.

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A child, a red dog roam
the corridors, still,

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of the broken home.

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No sound.

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The brilliant rag runners
halt before wide open doors.

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My old room!

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It's wallpaper-- cream,
medallioned with pink

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and brown--

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brings back the first
nightmares, long summer colds

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and Emma, sepia-faced,
perspiring

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over broth carried upstairs,
aswim with golden fats

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I could not taste.

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The real house became
a boarding school.

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Under the ballroom ceiling's
allegory someone at last

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may actually be allowed to learn
something; or from my window,

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cool with the unstiflement
of the entire story,

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watch a red setter
stretch and sink in cloud.

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