Because it's Women's History Month,
I'm going to end with a poem that focuses on women.
Some people would say everything I do focuses on women.
But obviously, I'm interested in the ways
that men and women can come together
to make this a more just world.
I will tell you parenthetically that when Beacon sent out
the manuscript for review, some dear soul wrote back and said
that this was an example of what isn't poetry, because--
I think what they were saying is that they thought
it was a little political.
I don't think when you hear it--
I write a lot that's political, but I
don't know that I would think of this this way.
But I think what I'm trying to say is one of my real interests
is in how we redefine what art is and what poetry is
and what art's work is in this world.
"Let Us Hold Hands."
"Let us hold hands with the Iroquois woman who
slipped berries into children's lips
while her sisters planted stars with a wooden hoe,
with the woman who rubbed warm oil into her neighbor's feet
when Plymouth's winter prowled and howled outside their doors.
With the woman who sewed faith into each stitch,
cloth comforts pieced to the rhythm of Español for babies
born al silencio del desierto.
With the woman who seasoned soups
with pepper and hope as her days took her further from the trees
she loved.
With the woman who parted her parched lips
and sang for her mother when they staggered
onto these shores in chains.
With the woman who trained her stubborn tongue
to wrap around that spiny language, English,
to place her child in school.
Let us now hold hands with the woman
who croons to the newborn left amid orange rinds
and newspaper, who teaches grandmothers to knit letters
into a word--
a word.
Who whispers to the woman dying with one breast.
Who holds a wife whose face is more broken than any bone.
Who bathes the woman found sleeping in black snow.
Let us hold hands with the woman who holds her sister in Bosnia,
Detroit, Somalia, Jacksonville, Guatemala, Burma,
Juarez, and Cincinnati.
With the woman who confronts the glare of eyes and gun barrels,
yet rises to protest in Yoruba, English, Polish, Spanish,
Chinese, Urdu.
Let us hold hands with the woman who
cooks, with the woman who builds,
with the woman who cries, with the woman who laughs.
With the woman who heals.
With the woman who prays.
With the woman who plants.
With the woman who harvests.
With the woman who sings.
With the woman whose spirits rise.
In this time that fears faith, let us hold hands.
In this time that fears the unwashed, let us hold hands.
In this time that fears age, let us hold hands.
In this time that fears touch, let us hold hands.
Brown hands.
Trembling hands.
Calloused hands.
Frail hands.
White hands.
Tired hands.
Angry hands.
New hands.
Cold hands.
Black hands.
Bold hands.
In towns and cities and villages.
Mano a mano, hand in hand, in mountains
and valleys and plains.
A ring of women circling the world, the ring
strong in our joining around our petalled home, this Earth.
Let us hold hands."
[APPLAUSE]