WEBVTT

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One of the middle
poems in the book

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is called "Delta Traveler."

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It's an elegy for my mother, who
was in the Mississippi Delta.

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And always wanted
to travel a lot,

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and got as far as Zanesville,
Ohio the first year

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she was married.

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And then six months later back,
she went to the South Pole.

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So she never really
got out, but I guess.

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I was born in Pickwick Dam,
Tennessee, where is that one?

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Lois, where are you?

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I was born in Pickwick
Dam, Tennessee.

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I was the first child
born in this town,

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because it wasn't even
a town before we came,

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because it was a TVA project.

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And in one of those nice
little ironies of life,

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the doctor who delivered me
was called Dr. Hurt, Damn you,

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Hurt.

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[LAUGHTER]

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What are you gonna do?

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And he was from
Corinth, Mississippi,

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and had to come across
the lake, around the lake

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or something to deliver
me and then took on back,

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took off back over.

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Well, the first-- it's
in eight short parts.

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And the first part is--

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it's about me, and the other
seven are about my mother.

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"Delta Traveler.

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Born in the quarter night,
brash tongue on the tongueless

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ward.

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The moon down, the
lake rising on schedule

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and Dr. Hurt already across
the water and headed home.

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And so I came sailing out.

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First child, a
string with no bed

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to lie in, a route with
no branch to leave.

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The black balloon of
promise tied to your wrist.

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One inch of pain,
and an inch of light.

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No wonder the children stand by
those moist graves, and produce

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is spread on the cobbled streets.

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And portraits are carried
out, and horns play.

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And women in single
file untangle corn

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from the storage
bin and soft cheese.

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I see with my eyes against the
sunlight, holding in one hand

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a death's head, spun
sugar and marzipan.

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I call it love, and seal my
eyes against the sunlight.

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I lie down with you,
I rise up with you.

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If a grain turns
in my eye, I know

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it is you entering, leaving.

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Your name like a
lozenge upon my tongue.

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You drove through the anti-life
scrim and snow scab, fluff stem

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hair and tender.

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You bloom in your own throat.

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Frost, flame in the frost dust.

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One scratch on the
slipstream, a closed mouth.

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High necked and high collared,
slumped and creased, a dress

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sits in a chair, your dress
or your mother's dress.

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A dress on a wooden
chair in a cold room.

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A room with no windows and no
doors, full of the East wind.

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The dress gets up, windbone
and windskin.

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Open the window,
it is not there.

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He goes to the door,
it is not there.

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The dress goes
back and sits down.

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The dress gets up.

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Three teeth and a
thumbnail, white, white.

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Four fingers that cradle
a black chin, outline

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of eye hole and nose hole.

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This skull and its
one hand float up

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from the tar, and
lime pit of dreams.

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Night after
slick night, to lodge

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in the fork of the gum tree.

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Its three teeth
in the leaf light.

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Its thumbnail in
flash and foil,

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its mouth hole a
nothing I need to know.

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Cat's eye in cloud, you survive.

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The porcelain corridors
that glide forever

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beneath your feet.

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The armed lawn chair you sit in.

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Your bones like paint.

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Your skin the wrong color,
all of this you survive.

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And hold on, a way
of remembering.

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A pulse that comes
and goes in the night.

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Match flare and wink that
comes and goes in the night.

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If the wafer of
light offends me,

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if the split tongue and the
snake's mouth offends me,

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I am not listening.

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They make the sound, which is
the same sound of the anthill.

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The hollow trunk, the
fruit of the tree.

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It is the echo, the one
transmitter of things.

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Transcendent and
inescapable, it is the cloud.

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The mosquitoes' bars,
the trickle of water

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across the leaf's vein.

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And so with the dead, the
rock dead in the dust.

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Worm and worm filled, pearl
milk eye and light in the Earth.

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The dead are brought back
to us, piece by piece.

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Under the sponge
lobe, inside the stump

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they shine with
their secret lives

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and grow big with
their messages.

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Wings beginning to stir, past
fixed and hearts clocked.

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Rising and falling
back, and rising."

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