Then about a year later, a similar thing happened
and I was in a fury.
I don't grieve very well.
And I used to be an athlete of sorts,
and I know what to do when one can't do anything else.
So I went down to the Y, and I started
to do the ridiculous things that people go to the Y do.
And there was a man who shined shoes
at the Y whose name was Buck, who had been in jail
and had traveled all over the world and was in his 60s.
And he liked me.
We kind of nodded at one another periodically.
We didn't talk very much, and I didn't talk to anybody else
at the Y. And he had some pictures of some great
champions, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray, Beau Jack, Kid Gavilán.
And he said something to me that allowed
me to finish a poem which I was struggling over.
So I owe the last three lines to this man.
In addition, the poem is not structured in the same way
as I had originally intended it.
Some of you perhaps know the work
of a man named W.E.B Du Bois.
He wrote many books, but the one he's probably most widely known
for is a collection of essays called The Souls of Black Folk.
And in that, he has an essay called
"The Passing of the First Born."
And for some reason while I was writing this poem,
it jumped into my head and I thought about it very deeply.
The other day, about two weeks ago, a man
called me on the telephone, I'd never heard from before,
about my book Debridement and he said,
"thanks very much for writing that book I think
it's a wonderful book, and I'm just glad you wrote it"
and hung the phone up.
And he told me that he was from Worcester, Massachusetts
and taught in a place called Clark University.
And it just so happens that Du Bois
had gotten a letter from Clark University in 1926,
very similar to the letter which is cited in this poem.
And I was very moved by the fact that poets function
in certain frequencies.
And there are times when you need to be picked up,
and they pick you up unknowingly.
And he had picked me up because I
had gotten a terrible review on Debridement about--
the book was about hate and so on.
And it's important that people let
you know that they are alert to what
you do as a kind of collective responsibility.
And the only way that you can pay it back is to pass it on.
Anyway, this poem is "Deathwatch."
One of the reasons why I'm talking so much
is because I have to get over that last poem.
It's hard for me to read that poem.
"Deathwatch."
"Twitching in the cactus hospital
gown, a loon on hairpin wings, she
tells me how her episiotomy is perfectly sewn
and doesn't hurt while she sits in a pile of blood,
which once cleaned the placenta my third son should be in.
She tells me how early he is, and how strong,
like his father, and long, like a black-stemmed Easter
rose in a white hand.
Just under five pounds, you live there, a collapsed balloon
doll, burst in your 15th hour, with the face
of your black father, his fingers, his toes, and eight
voodoo adrenaline holes in your pinwheeled hair-lined chest.
You witness your parents sign the autopsy and disposal papers
shrunken to duplicate in black ink on white paper,
like the country you were born in,
unreal, asleep, silent, almost alive.
This is a dedication to our memory of three sons--
two dead, one alive.
A reminder of a letter to Du Bois from a student at Cornell,
on behalf of his whole history class.
The class is confronted with the question
and no one, not even the professor,
is sure of the answer.
'Will you please tell us whether or not it is true that Negroes
are not able to cry?'
America needs a killing.
America needs killing.
Survivors will be human."
Let me explain those last three lines
because they've been misinterpreted,
vastly so, in fact.
I've got a couple of letters about it.
A man wrote me who was a chairman of the Philosophy
Department at Fresno State College after I'd
given a reading there and said didn't I know about numbers?
Wasn't my mathematics a little better than he thought it was?
And I did not realize that Blacks were outnumbered
and that they had no National Guard and no police force
and didn't he think that I shouldn't advocate revolution.
And I was of course amused as I always
am when I get imperceptive letters from people
of authority who should know better.
And I thought about answering, and then I decided it was
probably best if I didn't.
I wasn't about to change his mind by some facts.
The point is, in that poem, the last three lines
refer to something which has already happened.
And that what is asked for is the humanizing process
of the risk of pain and survival,
and the possibility of annihilation.
And that gives you the kind of ethos
whereby you can live your life.