WEBVTT

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We're never sure what the
manners of a poetry reading are.

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It's fine with me
if people will clap.

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It feels good.

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There's a danger that
you'll spoil me, though.

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This afternoon, I visited
a really wonderful class

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of undergraduates here--

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Claire McLane's class.

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And we talked about
this new book.

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And one of the students
asked me to read this poem,

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very brief poem called
"At the Sangoma."

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And in answering her
questions about it,

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I realized I was more or less
uttering an earlier poem.

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And I'm hoping that poem
will be in my selected poems.

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Is it?

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Oh, it had better be.

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Yes, of course, it will be.

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So this is the recent poem that
we discussed this afternoon.

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"At the Sangoma."

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I asked the ance--

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I tend to be against too much
explaining of poems beforehand.

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I will say a sangoma
in the Zulu culture,

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as the other poem explains, is a
seer who consults the ancestors

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and tells your fortune and
your health and so forth.

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"At the Sangoma."

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I asked the ancestors

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About my suffering.

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You

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Cannot understand it

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You were born to

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Too much of the possible.

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If I was born free then what

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Are you to me?

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You were not born free,

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To be born free!

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The ancestors said,

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Would be not to be born

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I asked the ancestors

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About their suffering.

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Because it was ours, now

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It is yours as the shape

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Of your head is yours.

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So I asked the ancestors

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About the children.

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Is it

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Their suffering too?

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That

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Is your problem they said.

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Honor it or not.

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So the students asked
me, what's the sangoma?

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