WEBVTT

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In my middle age
I'm finally thinking

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about trying to have a
baby, and my sweetheart

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says, why don't we
just buy a baby.

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And I've never read
this poem out loud.

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It's just this
little thing, really,

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but I think I'll just read
it, for the hell of it.

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If anybody here was in
Catholic school in the 50's

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might get a kick out of it.

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"Buying The Baby."

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It's called "Buying The Baby."

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In those days you could
buy a pagan baby for $5,

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the whole class saved up.

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And when you bought
it you could name

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it Joseph, Mary, or Theresa,
the class took a vote.

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But on the day I
brought in the $5

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my grandmother had given me for
my birthday something happened--

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a fire drill?

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An assassination?

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And if it was announced, Marie
Howe has, all by herself, bought

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a baby in India and
gets to name it,

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it was overshadowed
and forgotten.

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And if I tried to
picture my baby,

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the CARE package
carried to her hut

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and placed before her, as her
sisters and brothers watched,

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that image dissolved
in a long shining

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hall to the girl's lavatory.

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Even in my own room,
waiting for Roy Orbison

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to sing "Only The
Lonely" so I could sleep,

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I couldn't conjure that baby up.

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The $5 I gave her I
would never reach her.

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I knew that: because
I wanted my class

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to think me good for giving it.

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Spiritual Pride the nuns
called it, a sin of intention,

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which was a sister to
the sin of omission,

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which was the price for what
you hadn't done but thought.

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Sometimes I prayed
so hard for God

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to materialize at the foot of
my bed It would start to happen;

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then I would beg it
to stop, and it would.

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Weird, weird.

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