WEBVTT

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I'm working on a collection
of poems, now, involved

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with Chicago.

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Interspersed with
these poems, there

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will be quotes from newspapers,
and other newspapers,

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and guides to the city, court
trials, transcripts, history

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books, and so forth.

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There's a little pamphlet
that was published in 1909

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called Scene Chicago Guide,
telling the visitor to the city

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how to find his way
around the city.

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It was published a few years
after the Chicago fire.

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The first sentence
in this pamphlet

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is, everyone is
interested in fire.

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This is how to find your
way around the city.

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It will avail you nothing
to be told a place is so

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many blocks north, if
you start to find it

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by going east, west, or south.

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Be always on the safe side
and ask, which is north?

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If no policeman is in
sight, ask a fireman.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Chicago Public
Library, I am downtown.

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I am wearing sunglasses,
a funny nose, and a big,

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inch-and-a-half
long false teeth.

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I have them jammed on
over my other teeth.

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I have the look of
unabashed stupidity.

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[LAUGHTER]

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People comment on it.

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Some hoodlums jeer at
me, throw rocks at me.

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It is raining.

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Also, it is snowing.

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There are carols.

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It is December, late
December, nearly Christmas.

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Old men and women are huddled
in the corridor of the Chicago

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Public Library.

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I go there and huddle too.

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I keep on my
sunglasses and nose.

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People like them.

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They admire them.

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Then they look at me.

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They look closely and
huddle against me.

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They pick my pockets,
my pubescent blackheads,

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my father's watch chain.

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One of them, a dwarf,
takes me by the hand.

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We go walking,
just the two of us.

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After a while, we begin to fly.

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We fly very slowly, and low, and
toward the lake, and then back.

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I fall asleep.

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I have bad dreams.

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I awaken.

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Waldheim Jewish Cemetery,
the outer drive,

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stainless-steel florist
shops, the traffic lights--

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red, amber, and green.

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I enter off Montrose Avenue.

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Slowly, slowly, I begin
the long swim to Michigan.

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