WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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That was a young Ada.

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Oh, I'm still young.

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Krista Tippett would
give me a hard.

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She would give me a nudge
and be like, don't say that.

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You're still young.

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And the other poem
I want to read

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is a poem about the bifurcated
divide of this country.

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The Frontier of Never Leaving.

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If the wound you cover is
made of sheet metal and iron

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gates left over from the
junkyard of forever worried,

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and the school of always broken,
here, I have saved you a seat.

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If you have hidden
your outlawed books

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in your mattress and your
outlawed thoughts in your hands,

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here, I will give you refuge.

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This is what I heard
underneath it all,

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underneath and in the beginning,
but now let's move to Canada.

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I hear it's nice there.

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And they don't kill
each other as often.

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I can even forgive them
for speaking French.

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Really not all of
them speak French.

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But would I miss it?

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If I moved to Canada and
there is no war in the spring,

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I won't miss Iowa,
that's for certain.

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But that's the only thing.

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The field keeps growing
longer, like a veil between us,

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the mountains like sutures on
the map, and yet they are ours.

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The way the mustard can be ours
off the highway and windmills

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in the deserts and roads.

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Even roads, barbed wire
between us, fences between us,

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the roadrunner has
run into the river.

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And misters, you do not care.

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Another puzzle piece of my
American map has unfolded.

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I am the only thing
that fits together here

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in this frontier
of never leaving.

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Today I am going to play the
record of the revolution.

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Everybody is going
to sing along.

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And the more we turn it up, the
less the flag will wave over you

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and the more it will
become a swallowtail

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and migrate to our houses,
the little ones in the back,

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the ones with the
lights in the window.

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Look, you can see them opening
now, opening their doors

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in the fog.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Strange to see these
poems ring true.

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Poetry is a little rebellion.

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