WEBVTT

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I guess one of the
other kinds of silence

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are ways in which fact finally
resists transformation.

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And I read in a
newspaper a while ago,

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I'm sure you all heard about
it, about a man in San Francisco

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who offered a whole
lot of money for proof

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that the Holocaust really
occurred, and really believes

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it.

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It frightened me enormously
because, in fact,

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if the photographs didn't
exist, there'd been--

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apparently memory was no
longer considered proof.

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And history was no
longer considered

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a valid vehicle for a proof.

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And so if we didn't
have the photographs,

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it would have in
fact never occurred,

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which really terrified me.

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So I wrote this poem
titled "History."

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And there are other
events in it that

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actually occurred that I
found in a newspaper account

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in Italy.

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"History."

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"Into whose ear the
deeds are spoken.

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The only listener.

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So I believed he would
remember everything,

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the murmuring trees,
the sunshine's zealotry,

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its deep unevenness.

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For history is the opposite
of the eye for whom,

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for instance, six million
bodies in portions of hundreds

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and the flowerpots
broken by a sudden wind

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stand as equivalent.

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What more is there in fact?

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"I'll give $10,000 to the man
who proves the Holocaust really

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occurred," said the
exhausted solitude

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in San Francisco in 1980.

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Far in the woods in a
faded photograph in 1942

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the man with his own
genitalia in his mouth

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and hundreds of slow holes
a pitchfork has opened

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over his face grows beautiful.

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The ferns and deep wood
lilies catch the eye.

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Three men in ragged
uniforms with guns

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keep laughing nervously.

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They share the day with him.

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A bluebird sings.

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The feathers of the shade
touch every inch of skin--

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the hand holding down the
delicate gun, the hands

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holding down the delicate hips.

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And the sky is visible
between the men,

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between the trees, a blue
spirit enveloping anything.

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Late in the story,
in Northern Italy,

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a man cuts down some
trees for winter fuel.

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We read this in
the evening news.

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Watching the fire
burn late one night,

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watching it change and
change, a hand grenade,

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lodged in the pulp the
young tree grew around,

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explodes, blinding the
man, killing his wife.

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Now who will tell the
children fairy-tales?

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The ones where simple
crumbs over the forest floor

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endure to help us home?

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