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Poet's Choice

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in the cherry orchard or the sound of machine guns

where the young terrorists are exploding

among poor people on the streets of Los Angeles.

I begin making resolutions: to take risks, not to stay

in the south, to somehow do honor to Randall Jarrell,

never to kill myself. Through the oaks I see the courts,

the nets, the painted boundaries, and the people in tennis

whites who look so graceful from this distance.

Even Los Angeles -- city of cool -- sounds like lost angels, and the Californian Hass vows to honor his ancestors with a distrust for any false charm or inherited boundaries. That's what this column's for. That's what I hope to live up to.

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