WEBVTT

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I had to visit another
group of captives

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today, because I visited
a high school here.

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You think you're
free-- you think

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you'll never have
to go there again,

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and then they send you back.

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I tell you, wow.

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And actually it
was a great group.

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They were they were
sweethearts, but I mean,

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I confessed immediately
that I had a punster father,

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the kind that nudges you in
the ribs and says "get it?"

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And everything--
I was in advance

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trying to take care of the
groaners that would come.

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Wordplay is my bête noire.

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What Richard Howard says,
poets have a strong weakness

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for oxymoron like this
combination of two words that--

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I mean, and he's
that case in point.

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There's a guy who cannot
stop playing with words,

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and I confess it too.

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And as I was telling
them about this,

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I remembered that someone
had said that confession

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was good for the soul the way a
tweed coat is good for dandruff.

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But yeah, it doesn't
cure the condition,

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but you just don't
notice it as much.

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So my father who
used to say-- he

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would say I take a bath once a
month whether I need it or not.

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He got all these lines from bad
westerns and things like that,

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and now he's 84 and he actually
does dribble on himself.

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So it takes on a
certain poignancy.

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Now he really does only
take it once a month.

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Now he means it.

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So this is the bath poem
for him, "The Water."

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My theme tonight is water.

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In case you don't
notice later, you

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will see that through
almost everything.

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The water took time to
calm, but when its surfaces

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had settled on a face,
the image went far down

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into its one lit lens.

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Her head shone deepest
in and farthest off,

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its long hair dripping needle
points up toward her eyes.

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The world was outside down or
topside in in broken rosettas.

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Was one at all intelligible,
used to partnerships,

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two breasts implacable drank
quite companionably there

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at the pool, tip touched
tip each with its other

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a practical endlessness
poured from a pair.

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This was Mesmer to
terrify mortals.

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She rose from the tub
world's calm collaborations,

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rose in order to order
herself, in order

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to carry her own weight
again and to take

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on the old mundane
emergency, the world at

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large, the land of
separations hefted.

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And as she rose, her
likeness fell away.

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It wound from her in coil
works and in thread works

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spun of time.

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It swept in shining
down and fell behind

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in the sense of eventual.

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Now it was clear who was blind.

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