WEBVTT

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I wonder if any of you know the
parable of the three wise men

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who go past a dead dog.

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The first wise man says, "What
a terrible sight that dead dog

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is."

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And the second wise man
says, "What a terrible smell

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that dead dog has."

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But the third man, who's
supposed to be wisest of all

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says, "What beautiful white
teeth that dead dog has."

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And that's one way
of looking at things.

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But it's not the only way.

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And this poem is
called "Not Beautiful."

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"In all Hiroshimas, in
raw and raving voices,

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live skeletons of the Camp,
flies hugging feces, in war,

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in famine, he'd
find the beautiful.

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Being saintly, his vocation
was to find it at the dying

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bedside, in the disrobing dead.

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And what he did, they
said, you should be trying.

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Well, once, while dissecting
a nerve in a cadaver

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my cigarette dropped,
fell into its abdomen.

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I picked it up, I puffed
out the smoke of hell.

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Yet still was not fit
for time to come--

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the freehold grave,
things run over

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like slush all bloody
and throbbing--

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for though they were dumb,
not beautiful, I said.

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It's the parable again
of the three wise men--

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the first who, with finger and
thumb, tweaked his nostrils,

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and the second who pressed
his eyes to his palms,

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whilst the third, the
wisest, cried, "Oh

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what beautiful, white teeth
have these vermin which died."

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Homo sum, et cetera, but the
third was divine, as they said.

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One sees the good point, of
course, and may admire it;

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but, sometimes, I think that
the curse is more sacred

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than to pretend by affirming.

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And offend.

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