WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.650 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.650 --> 00:00:09.860 align:middle line:84% I must confess, I changed one of the lines in the poem-- 00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:11.180 align:middle line:90% the third line. 00:00:11.180 --> 00:00:18.560 align:middle line:84% It really is supposed to read, "in January, we missed July." 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:22.440 align:middle line:84% But I'm in Tucson, so I switch it up for you guys. 00:00:22.440 --> 00:00:24.260 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:24.260 --> 00:00:27.260 align:middle line:84% Please, don't tell the poetry gods what I've done. 00:00:27.260 --> 00:00:28.480 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:29.990 align:middle line:90% I'm a the poetry chameleon. 00:00:29.990 --> 00:00:32.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:35.240 align:middle line:84% This next poem is titled "History." 00:00:35.240 --> 00:00:37.460 align:middle line:84% "It is Budapest, and the December light 00:00:37.460 --> 00:00:40.160 align:middle line:84% is lost in the dark of the morning fog. 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:45.770 align:middle line:84% And memory is trying to lift its weight from the River Danube. 00:00:45.770 --> 00:00:50.360 align:middle line:84% To that basin, history has watered down. 00:00:50.360 --> 00:00:56.240 align:middle line:84% It is the fog, tired of being above it all. 00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:58.850 align:middle line:90% Follow me, it says. 00:00:58.850 --> 00:01:02.120 align:middle line:84% We don't have to commit to the land or its people. 00:01:02.120 --> 00:01:05.990 align:middle line:84% We can make love to the Earth and leave its bed alone. 00:01:05.990 --> 00:01:09.200 align:middle line:84% We can roll over headstones, and no one 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:12.170 align:middle line:90% will know the names of the dead. 00:01:12.170 --> 00:01:15.170 align:middle line:84% We can slow the movement of horses 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:18.590 align:middle line:84% and pass their fear back to time. 00:01:18.590 --> 00:01:22.840 align:middle line:84% We are all in exile, the fox says. 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:26.230 align:middle line:84% When he was a young man at Auschwitz, 00:01:26.230 --> 00:01:30.400 align:middle line:84% my father leapt out of line for a potato, 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:33.970 align:middle line:84% and was saved by a bell that never rang. 00:01:33.970 --> 00:01:39.340 align:middle line:84% 60 years later, he stands in his place by his mother's tomb. 00:01:39.340 --> 00:01:43.480 align:middle line:84% The only tomb containing his hunger for memory. 00:01:43.480 --> 00:01:46.080 align:middle line:90% Feed me, feed me. 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:49.290 align:middle line:84% He does not cry, like the ground does not cry. 00:01:49.290 --> 00:01:51.630 align:middle line:90% 1944 from its spring. 00:01:51.630 --> 00:01:54.600 align:middle line:84% And the horses clucking the cemetery walls 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:58.410 align:middle line:84% do not cry for the fog to deepen. 00:01:58.410 --> 00:02:02.790 align:middle line:84% Only a congregation of birds hovering and Talmudic chatter 00:02:02.790 --> 00:02:06.690 align:middle line:84% tolls the silence as a distant river's passage 00:02:06.690 --> 00:02:12.760 align:middle line:84% rolls over the frozen limbs of winter. 00:02:12.760 --> 00:02:16.990 align:middle line:84% What they learned before they fluttered out of formation 00:02:16.990 --> 00:02:20.620 align:middle line:84% and what they look like in full flight, 00:02:20.620 --> 00:02:23.710 align:middle line:84% and whether the birds ever return to pay homage 00:02:23.710 --> 00:02:29.010 align:middle line:84% are simply questions that remain never far from home. 00:02:29.010 --> 00:02:32.000 align:middle line:90%