WEBVTT

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I'd like to read some new poems,
if I can find one in particular.

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There's a carpenter that
I met in Nova Scotia,

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a 70-year-old man.

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And it's a very rural area.

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We go there in the
summer for a month.

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It's the kind of area where
people would come up to me

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and say, you read
books, don't you?

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And I would say yes.

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And they'd say, I thought so.

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They'd say, Ted Porter
reads books, too.

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You should get to know him.

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And sure enough, Ted Porter read
books, and he's this carpenter.

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And besides, he's self-educated.

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Loves poetry, and knows
something about it.

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And we became good friends.

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He even understood
that carpentry was

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a metaphor for poetry as well.

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And he's just a marvelous man.

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I think this poem just
attempts to really transcribe

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the kinds of things
he does and says.

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"The Carpenter's Song."

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"When I'm no longer
young, let me

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be able to make wine
from chokecherries,

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and care enough to let it age.

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And when friends come, let
them sip it on a torn-out car

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seat under a tree.

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And let my house smell
of books and pipe smoke,

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and let its disarray
be the luxury

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of a man who makes cabinets.

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And after it gets
dark, let's move

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to the room where the squeeze
boxes sing songs, and talk

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Iceland by freighter,
Newfoundland on a whim,

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all the arrivals
one doesn't plan.

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And let the evidence be deep in
my voice, the lines of my face,

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and let me call this style.

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Let me rebuild then the
lighthouse my father

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rebuilt years ago.

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And let me know the history
of old houses haunted

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by rats and shadows,
good people and bad.

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And when asked, let me sense
what can be redeemed and what

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can't.

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And yes, let me be able to
say I'm a builder of houses,

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a man who works slow
and knows how hard it is

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to get the inside just right.

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I let my metaphors
grow from that.

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Something lives, stretching
out, trying to make contact

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with something else.

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And let me call this my work.

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And when I'm no longer young,
let there be poets in my life,

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their words aftertastes
on the tongue.

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And let me speak those words
like a man who has heard a spar

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snap on a ship, who has
been lost once or twice

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and come back.

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And let me declare I've
been a lover of women

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without declaring it, and
feel I've treated them

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better than wood, knowing
I've been a husband of wood,

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have cared for it
with my own hands.

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Let my hands be thick badges
of power, rarely used.

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My fist and inner fist,
the size of a heart.

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And let this be visible to men.

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And let the old death dog
sense me coming a long way off,

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ready to forgive
anything I've done.

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And let me call all
this some goddamn luck."

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