WEBVTT

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This is a poem
about the first time

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I saw two people making love.

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I was very small
and I watched it

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through slatted window shades
of of my parents' terrace

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when I was supposed
to be taking a nap.

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I guess that must
have been seven--

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I don't really recall my age.

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But I wasn't
supposed to be there,

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and they didn't
know I was there.

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And it wasn't my parents.

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It was actually two people who
weren't married to each other

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and whose spouses
were downstairs.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so it was a
Sunday afternoon and I

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went running downstairs to tell
my mother this incredible thing

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I had witnessed.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And she said, now you must
never tell Aunt Ellen.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I wish the poem was
as sexy as the story.

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I tried.

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Other events in
it, I spent a lot

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of time driving cross-country
and also driving just

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between Iowa City and Denver,
and Iowa City and Murray,

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Kentucky, for reasons
that involved,

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in fact, lust and love.

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So it seemed appropriate that
the poem is also situated

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in a motel room in Nebraska.

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It's called Salmon.

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I watched them once at
dusk, on television,

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run, in our motel room
halfway through Nebraska,

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quick, glittering, past beauty,
past the importance of beauty,

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archaic, not even hungry,
not even endangered,

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driving deeper and
deeper into less.

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They leapt up falls,
ladders, and rock,

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tearing and leaping a gold
river and a blue river traveling

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in opposite directions.

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They would not stop, resolution
of will and helplessness

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as the eye is helpless
when the image forms itself

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upside down, backwards,
driven up into the mind,

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and the world unfastens
itself from the deep ocean

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of the given justice--

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aspen leaves, mother
attempting suicide,

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the white night-flying moth,
the ants dismantled bit by bit

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and carried in right through
the crack in my wall.

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How helpless the still
pool is, upstream,

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awaiting the gold
blade of their hurry.

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Once, indoors, a child,
I watched at noon

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through slatted wooden blinds,
a man and woman, naked,

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eyes closed, climb onto each
other on the terrace floor

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and ride, two gold
currents wrapping round

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and round each other,
fastening, unfastening.

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I hardly knew what I saw.

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Whatever shadow there
was in that world,

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it was the one each cast onto
the other, the thin black seam

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they seemed to be trying
to work away between them.

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I held my breath.

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As far as I could tell, the work
they did with sweat and light

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was good.

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I'd say they traveled far
in opposite directions.

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What is the light at the end
of the day, deep, reddish-gold,

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bathing the walls,
the corridors--

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light that is no
longer light, no longer

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clarifies, illuminates,
antique freed from the body

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of the air that carries it?

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What is it for the space of
time where it is useless, merely

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beautiful?

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When they were done they made
a distance, one from the other,

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and slept, outstretched on the
warm tile of the terrace floor,

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smiling, faces pressed
against the stone.

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