WEBVTT

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Now I want to do
a trip to Mexico.

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I'm just going to
do two more pieces,

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and then I'll give
you your time back.

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You've been very patient.

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The first one is just
a poem called "Mexico,"

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and it's just to sort
of get you into Mexico.

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And then the second
one I will read,

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it has to do with the buses.

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And the second one is from the
new book, The Bus to Veracruz.

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It's the title piece.

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This is called "Mexico."

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Once each year after
a warm day in April,

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when darkness
comes to the desert

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uninvited but planning
to spend the night,

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something hits me like a shovel.

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And I am stunned into
believing anything is possible.

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There is no overture to frenzy.

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I simply look up,
and see Scorpio.

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Most dangerous of
friends, with the last two

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stars in his tail blinking
like lights at the railroad

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crossing.

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While in one claw, he holds the
top of a mountain in Mexico.

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And suddenly I know,
everything I need

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is waiting for me south of
here, in another country,

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and I have been walking
through empty rooms

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and talking to furniture.

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Then I say to myself, why should
I stay home and listen to Bach?

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Such precision could
have happened to anyone,

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to an infinite number of
monkeys with harpsichords.

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And next morning I start south,
with my last chances flapping

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their wings, while birds
of passage stream over me

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in the opposite direction.

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I never find what
I'm looking for.

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And each time I return older,
with my ugliness intact.

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But with the knowledge
that if it isn't there,

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in the darkness and the
Scorpio, it isn't anywhere.

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[APPLAUSE]

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