WEBVTT

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And the first poem in Palladium,
also, is partly about language.

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So I'll segue into this one.

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I think I wrote this when I had
a realization that some things

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can't be fixed.

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And for a long time, I think
I thought, with language,

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everything could be made right.

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That if you told a
lie, it could be--

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I'd never-- maybe I didn't
think that about lying,

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but I thought that you
could explain yourself.

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And then I realized
at a point when

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I think it was maturity,
that some things can't

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be fixed at all, and that's
part of the subject of the poem.

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It's called Babies, with all
the various meanings of lovers

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as babies and babies as babies.

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Babies, born
gorgeous with nerves.

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With brains the pink
of silver polish,

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or jellyfish wafting ornately
through the body below.

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An invertebrate cooing
on the mother tongue

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shushes and lulls them
into thinking all is well.

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As they grow, they learn
salvage, tear out guides

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to happiness, say apologies,
can outshine lies,

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guilt be lick-spittled
from their lives,

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bad glycerined to good.

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Like a child's
first school pencils

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in their formal brilliance
and sharp new smells,

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they lie as lovers.

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Maybe one cries the wrong
name, and the night,

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skinning them pleasantly
alive, leaps away in shards.

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Then it's time for restitution.

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A tin of home-baked,
holding gingham safety,

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fetal as the light through
mason jars of beets and brine.

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Or jewelry clasping
and unclasping,

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aisles of fluorescents from
great department stores.

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A distracting
plenitude, and tempting.

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Still, the beloved may
stay bitter as an ear,

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the tongue pressed
into, unwanted.

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And the word end, spiny,
finally formed, indents them

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and is understood.

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They learned the hard way as
hurts accrue and the brain

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is cratered as a rock
by rain that fell

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ages passed on unprotected mud.

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An insult keeps,
despite apologies.

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And when it vaporizes at last,
its space fills with grains

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that harden to a fossil shaped
exactly like the insult.

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They grow up when they know
that, sometimes, only a gesture

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responsive as a heart-shaped
parachute above a jump a life

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depends on to be perfect
the first time will ever do.

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