Thank you.
You wouldn't want to reserve the speaker.
That's a cold way to live.
But where I come from, withdrawal is easy to forgive.
When mother was a girl, troubles shadowed that country,
the barren lands.
Mother ran to school, winter mornings,
with hot potatoes in her hands.
She was like this, foreign, a stranger.
She couldn't hear very well, the world was all far.
Were the others laughing?
She never could tell.
Later, though she was frightened,
she loved, like everyone.
A lean man, mean, took her.
I am his son.
He was called Hawk by the town people but was an ordinary man.
He lived by hunting and trapping wherever the old slew ran.
Our house was always quiet.
Summers, the windmill creaked or a board.
I carried wood, never touching anyone.
Winters, the black stove roared.
Forgive me these shadows I cling to,
good people, trying to hold quiet in my prologue.
Hawks cling to barons wherever I live.
The world says, dog-eat-dog.