WEBVTT

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Last one from The
Accidental, and Joshua

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is also working with this poem.

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"The Spirit Is
Blood from a Stone."

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To bed, I guess, that
weary enough I can erase

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For a night those accidents
of spirit and flesh

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Who amuse themselves by bringing
the lynch mob behind me--

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Whose old glittering
eyes have made me

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a guest in my mother's house,

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An orphan, an illiterate,
and a law-abiding whore.

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In whose eyes I find
my brother again,

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And dream him among
the order of fathers

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Whose work made a desert of me,

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Just as I worked to
desert them in the desert,

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Rock picks in their belts,

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The shade of their hats
against miles of sand

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that dazzle the mind
with the tracks of those

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who followed too,

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Mulish, towards veins of
metal running through the land

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up north,

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So rich, the mother lode, you
can dig it out with a spoon,

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So certain that bolas de plata
some four thousand pounds

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were found

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Even after the days
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado

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went seeking the cities of
legend for God and gold.

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Granted, the
expedition of fourteen

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hundred men and
fifteen hundred animals

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did not find the riches of
which they had been told.

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They arrived in this country
with swords and the pope

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When shovels and prayer have
profited better on the wayside,

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As it goes, lined with
the sun- bleached bones

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of unfortunate men.

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The earth did not devour
them, much as they compassed,

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all their days--
what a thing to do--

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to eat dust.

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Going south and
further south, I saw

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the adits carved into
the high red cliffs.

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They mouth the gritty attending
silence of the Coronado Trail.

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I did not understand.

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Consider, salt of the earth,
sulfur, rain, copper, air,

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rolling down in drops,
seeping into the mine shafts,

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bubbling, hissing
in the limestone,

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Weeping tears over
tears, following

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slow, indiscernible,
involuntary, relentless,

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It trails from the walls,
eats with abandon, rains.

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It makes its way in the
dark, its crystalline habits,

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its metallic and sweet taste,

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Its incomprehensible
electric blue,

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So blue the gamblers
carry it for luck

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And the women say it
protects against el

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ojo, a necessary evil,

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this bluestone, Roman vitriol,
blue copperas, chalcanthite,

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copper sulfate,

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All the beginnings
of a caustic--

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all the makings of
a caustic beginning.

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One thing is clear, blue water
means copper, a lot of it,

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resting just below
the iron-red soil

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you see driving down
route 666 into town

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Past Cole's Pizza and the
schoolyard, the dealership,

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Maud's,

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The courthouse where I carved
my name into the old soft brick,

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And the river whose
hundred-year floods

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would bring my
father to hang Saint

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Christopher around his neck,

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To call his son, my brother, by
the name of one so surely cast

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out even the nomadic
children of the sun

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might be lifted up and
carried from one turn

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to another in his hands,
as the river turns water.

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Be patient, my love,
I am telling you:

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In the crossing the
light breaks you,

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Hailing, dying in
cries, praising you

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among tongues like white
wings darting on the surface,

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and below, where moss
pulls at your legs,

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Entrails of legions who
have sworn themselves over

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to guard your will
against your will,

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Say yes, indefinitely,
here you are at last,

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But where you thought you could
get to is not for you to end.

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What did you think?

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That the whole would unfold
at once in a breath, in birth,

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this child at home, cast
out, whose task in this world

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is to carry you in his
chest, behind his ribs,

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You, pouring in, out, of
the two halves of his heart?

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I kept you wandering
through the mazes

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of the underground mines, far
below the roots of the shrubs,

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where blue water seeps through
the shafts and bluestone

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gathers in the veins.

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Against my will and yours, I
held the considerable weight

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of you in my hands.

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I dig you up, find you watering
the small swelling lawn,

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Unearth you in front of the
little green-shingled company

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house

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weeding a trellis of
pink roses by the door

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And the cactus you planted
in the flower beds.

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You rake, dig into
rock and clay,

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Break clods of
earth in your hands,

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Plant seeds you buy
at the company store.

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You hum through copper wires
running through my house.

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I would have walked the earth
without the earth you walked,

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I would not have looked
back, backbone, stone,

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What are they doing now but
looking up from their work

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towards the sky, Díos mío?

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In the east and the north,
just beyond the next border?

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Had you not decreed my silence.

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Wise up, güerita.

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Spanish wasn't allowed.

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Forced at gunpoint
into cattle boxes,

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Deported to New Mexico,
left in the desert.

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Communists, enemy aliens,
obstructing production

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in a time of war.

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We strike.

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We await contracts with hands
at our brothers' throats.

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Walk the earth if you will,
since you will not find shelter

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in your father's company,

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This much I promise,
for that mouth.

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It is unfortunate.

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Perhaps you would
like to negotiate

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the terms of the impasse.

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Who would notice it?

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Bear in mind, we wish to
state one conclusion with all

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the emphasis at our command.

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Every day this
difference is prolonged

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constitutes a threat
to our general welfare.

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We realize the stakes are high.

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We understand why you have
found it difficult to reach

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an agreement.

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It is the nation
itself, however,

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which here has most at stake.

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No loss can compare with what
the country between you suffers.

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Backcountry, wading next to you
in the green pools of the river.

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We bake fish on hot
stones beside our fire,

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watch the cliffs for bighorn
scaling the rock above us.

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Downstream, where
the figs grow wild

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we make our way to the abandoned
mineshaft, our destination.

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The bats have taken over and
the stench of their droppings

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stops us,

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Even as the cavernous
heart, so old, so difficult,

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Pauses, is silenced,
sleeps by us patiently,

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Even as we are silenced
in my memory of us

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transfixed in its eye.

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We've come all this
way to our ruin,

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All but in our having
known it, vanished.

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