WEBVTT

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I want to begin a
reading of my own work

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with the opening poem
of my second book,

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partially to set the
tone for the reading,

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but also because this poem is
particularly important to me.

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It represented a real
breakthrough in my work.

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When I looked at my
first book, the book

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seemed to me to be written
by a young person who

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lived in the present
without a sense of how

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his own history had formed
him, the "him" being me.

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And this particular
poem is the beginning

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of an exploration of
a sense of a self's

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relation to my own history
and my relation to others.

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Poem is called "The Ancestors
and What They Left."

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Can everyone hear me
all right, by the way?

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Good.

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"On the earth's
thin crust, there's

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a thread, a residue,
some of the dead rising

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to the surface, my
great uncle and my aunt,

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grandfather putting on his shoe.

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There's the hull of
the boat that brought

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him here, now a fist of coal.

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Grandmother left her scent on
the doorknob, a voice print

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in the air.

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What we used to call debris
now helps us breathe.

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This tree's leaves contain
my father's veins, its steam

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a reminiscence of his breath.

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This loneliness will pass,
this feeling off-center.

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In a moment, we'll leave
the room of this world

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and not return.

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What doors have not been opened?

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What more could we ask for?

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On my hand, there's a line
which extends beyond my life.

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It's love and fame.

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It's a chain that
ties me to my past.

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I'm on the dock, waving
to the Jews, our an--

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disguised as bureaucrats
with secretaries

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I love, bureaucrats
I can't stand.

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Before that, on the farm,
the vodka and potatoes--

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I carry their sprout and
smell in the pastoral sense

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of the salt lick, the tremor,
cows kneeling on a hill.

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Underneath, in the
damp graveyard that

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extends from the earth's
surface to its core,

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someone's father is whispering,
I'm pushing through the dirt

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that I've become.

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And in my head, I hear
his longing and his call.

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We're like two figures
touching in a mirror, a trick

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to find out which is us.

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And if I light a
candle, pass my palm

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above the flame, the
smudge that's left--

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that dark streak, that film--

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becomes my sign, the
hillside of my own terrain."

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