WEBVTT

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And this is called "One Life."

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A woman walking in a
walker on the cliffs

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recalls great bodily
joys, much pain.

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Nothing in her is apt
to say, my heart aches.

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Though she read those words
in a battered college text

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this morning as the sun
rose, it is all too mixed,

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the heart too mixed with
laughter raucousing the grief--

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her life too mixed.

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She shakes her
heavy silvered hair

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at all the fixed
declarations of baggage.

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I should be dead and I'm alive.

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Don't ask me how.

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I don't eat like I
should, and still I

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like how the drop of
vodka hits the tongue.

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I was a worker
and a mother, that

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means a worker and a worker.

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But for one, you don't pay
union dues or get a pension.

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For the other, the men ran
the union, we ran the home.

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It was terrible and good.

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We had more than half a life.

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I had four lives at least.

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One out of marriage, when
I kicked up all the dust

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I could before I knew
what I was doing.

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One life for the girls on
the line during the war.

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Yes, painting our legs and
jitterbugging together.

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One life with a
husband, not the worst.

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One with your children, none
of it just what you thought,

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none of it for it could
have been if we'd known.

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We took what we could,
but even this is a life.

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I'm reading a lot of books I
never read my daughter brought

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home from school--

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plays where you can
almost hear them

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talking, romantic
poets, Isaac Babel.

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A lot of lives worse and
better than what I knew.

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I'm walking again.

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My heart doesn't ache.

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Sometimes though, it rages."

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