WEBVTT

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The next poem is called "At Mt.

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Auburn Cemetery."

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At Mt.

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Auburn Cemetery

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Walking among the
graves for exercise

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Where do you get your ideas

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How do I stop them

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Looking for Mike Mazur's marker

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I looked down at the grass
and saw Stanislaw Baranczak

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Our Solidarity poetry
reading in Poznan

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Years later, in
Newton now he said

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I'm a US Liberal with a
car like everybody else

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When I held Bobo
dying in my arms

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His green eyes told
me I am not done yet

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Then he was gone

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When he was young, he enjoyed

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Leaping up onto the
copy machine to press

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A button and hear it
hum to life and rustle

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A blank page, then
another out onto its tray

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Sometimes he batted the
pages down to the floor

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I used to call it Bobo's hobby

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Here's a marble wicker bassinet

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Marking a baby's grave

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To sever the good
fellowship of dust

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The vet's needle first,
a sedative, then death

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Now Willie paces the house

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Mowling his elegy for Bobo

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They never meow to one another,

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Just to people or to
their nursing mother

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when they're small

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I marvel at this massive
labelled American elm

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Spreading above a
cluster of newer names

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Chang, Ohanessian,
Kondakis joining Howells,

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Emerson, Shaw

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And here's a six-foot
sphere of polished granite

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Perfect and inscribed Walker

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Should I have let him
die his own cat way

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The cemetery official confided

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Bruce Lee spends less on a
stone than Schwarzenegger

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What will mark the markers like

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When mourners they bow and kneel

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And fall down flat
to kiss the heaps

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They have in trust
under the splendid elm

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Also marked with its
tag a noble survivor

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Civilization lifted
my cat from the street

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Gave him a name, his shots,
and managed his death

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Now Willie howls the
loss from room to room

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When people say I'm ashamed
of being German, Said Arendt

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I want to say I'm
ashamed of being human

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Sometimes when Bobo made
his copies of nothing

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I'd crumple one for him to chase

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And combat in the
game of being himself

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Thanks very much