WEBVTT

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Well, I've gotten better
and better over that time,

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so you're luckier.

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I'm going to read new
work, which is to say,

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poems written since
this last book.

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I should say about "The
Garden" that it's a chapbook.

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It's really just one poem,
bound in green for Easter.

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Can you hear me in the back?

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OK.

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There's not too much I can do to
raise my voice because I really

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am sick.

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So if you can't hear it, you
should move more forward.

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"The Blind Girl"

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When I was 10, God sent two
arrows meant for my eyes.

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Two arrows, two capsules of snow
that shattered, so the bandage

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froze to my face.

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When they took it
off, I was blind.

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Nurse, how strange the
darkness is, not black at all,

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but the passive
color of absence,

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as though one afternoon
an image came--

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of autumn, of a garden where all
color had converged to fade--

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and faded and was not replaced.

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I listened.

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I heard voices, I
heard my own voice,

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rising from the still
transparent body

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of an angel as calmly
as the wind lifts

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the edges of the curtains,
letting in the measured light.

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