WEBVTT

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I told you, I sometimes
write poems about things

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that they have not been
popularly written about before.

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This is a group of
poems-- there are four--

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called the shapeshifter poems.

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Do you know what
a shapeshifter is?

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A werewolf is an example
of a shapeshifter.

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A shapeshifter is something--

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one-- that all of a
sudden, for some reason,

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becomes something else.

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And it's very frightening.

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And you may be able to tell
what these poems are about,

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shapeshifter poems.

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One.

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The legend is whispered
in the women's tent.

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How the moon, when
she rises full,

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follows some men into themselves
and changes them there.

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The season is
short but dreadful.

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Shapeshifters, they
wear strange hands.

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They walk through
the houses at night,

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their daughters
do not know them.

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Two.

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Who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father?

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Not the windows which
see and say nothing.

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Not the moon, that awful eye.

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Not the woman she will become
with her scarred tongue.

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Whoo, whoo, whoo, the owl
laments into the evening.

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Who will protect her,
this pretty little girl?

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Three.

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If the little girl
lies still enough,

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shut enough, hard
enough, shapeshifter

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may not walk tonight.

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The full moon may
not find him here.

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The hair on him
bristling, rising up.

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Four.

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The poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl

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breathes into her pillow,
the one she cannot tell,

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the one there is no one to hear.

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This poem is a political
poem, is a war a poem,

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is a universal poem, but it
is not about these things.

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This poem is about
one human heart.

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This poem is the poem
at the end of the world.

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