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So the last one I'll read.

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I presented a poetry
show for BBC Radio 4

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and went to New Mexico
with my producer

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to see a land art installation
called The Lightning Field.

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I don't know if any of you
guys know Walter de Maria.

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And I hadn't been able to
write for quite a while.

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And the desert is
just always a place

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that somehow feels like my
spiritual home and renews me.

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And I came back from that trip
and ended up writing this poem.

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I thought would be fitting
to end with this called

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"High Desert, New Mexico."

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Temple of the rattlesnake's
religion, deluge and heat

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surge, crush of
the atom's rupture.

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Night blackens like a
violin and bright flour

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falls from the
kitchens of heaven.

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This is where the
seams begin to loosen,

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where you can walk for
miles in any direction--

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rabbit, lizard,
raven, insect drone--

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and almost forget the
shame of being human.

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Sagebrush, elk, not
everything is broken.

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Horses appear at
this remote cabin

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to stand outside
and wait for you

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to come with a single apple.

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Abandon your despair.

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You who enter here forsaken.

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The wind is saying something.

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Listen.

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Thank you guys.

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