WEBVTT

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And I'll read two more.

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There's this thing that
happens in this book where

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over and over again, all of the
poems are just like, oh, maybe

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I do want to be alive.

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So I do know they
all end the same way.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I'll read two of those.

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This one is hard to read.

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It's called, It Was
the Best of Times.

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It Was the Worst of Times.

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It was the best of times.

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It was the worst of times.

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When walls were
raised, we swore we'd

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be, we swore we'd
be a raft, inside,

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a raft inside the whale
that we, the whale that we

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were sovereign of.

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We sovereigns of, though
everyone, yes, everyone

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was party to, was
party to the angel of,

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the angel of the pending storm.

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The rising storm,
our little raft,

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our sprawling raft
inside its eye,

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inside its eye,
where everything,

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where everything was calm.

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Oh, calm against the brackish
wall, the bracing wall that

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was the world, the world that
was somehow ablaze, somehow

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ablaze with hyacinth.

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With hyacinth inside the
whale, inside the walls,

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we lived our lives.

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We lived our lives of mowing
grass, of shearing grass,

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despite the times,
despite the times,

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the children gone, the
children gone to future war,

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the future war of
what we made, of what

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we made our money and our money
and our rage against our rage

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against the hyacinth, the
hyacinth, the children,

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the children who
were made to die,

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were made to die in futures I,
for futures I could not abide,

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will not abide.

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I say inside, I stay inside
the whale, and the whale and I,

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we cut our grass.

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We cut the grass or fail to.

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So we failed to, and our little
plot, our little plot of life,

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a raft, our little plot grown
wild, a facsimile of wildness,

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a wilderness conditioned by,
conditioned by the boundaries,

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the boundaries of property.

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Propriety the lines drawn in,
the lines drawn in the wild,

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in grass.

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The leaves of grass divided from
divided from what's not by law.

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What's not by law, the whale,
the kids, the hyacinth, oh,

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violet fire, war of
life against its end.

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Against its end,
we built a raft.

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We built a raft, we thought, and
now we thought, and now we what?

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We want, and now we watch.

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We wait, we watch.

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We wait, we watch.

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We hang up shelves.

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We paint our rooms.

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We dance around.

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We dance around each other slow.

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We hear the news.

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We memorize.

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We memorize the
names, the names,

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the names we say or don't.

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Or don't the lost love,
don't the lost already know,

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already know what's rising love?

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We rise.

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We pace.

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We make.

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We weather on inside the whale.

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I've got the story wrong.

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But love I want so
much, it's selfish.

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Yes, it's selfish.

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But I hope we get
to live like this.

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I hope it isn't how we die.

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OK.

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[APPLAUSE]

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