Next three poems are family poems.
And I'll just introduce the first one,
which is called The Execution of the Rosenbergs.
Many of you, I hope, know that the Rosenbergs
were executed in 1953 after President Eisenhower refused
to grant them a pardon.
They were executed during a period
of the darkest part of our history, the McCarthy era.
Alleged, but not proven communists.
Allegedly giving secrets to the Soviet Union,
without substantial proof.
And the source for this poem was when I was a child,
my parents took me, or my mother took me, to a demonstration
against their execution.
The Execution of the Rosenbergs.
That summer, father moved farther away,
framed by a larger event.
A president elected, the communists uncovered,
and two Jews executed in their place.
So mother mourned a parallel of death.
Losses to be measured against the past.
At the march, I was confused by the masses of people gathered.
A stranger's breath and tears.
Could they have known what my father meant?
It seems a long time ago.
The personal life, the tiny room, I lived in as a child.
But there is a photograph, which opens up almost
like a porch looking out to a field of families out there,
sitting on the weeds, calling flowers by improper names.
Then someone's called away.
Then another.
Till the field is the future's reflecting glass.
Someone's called to the gallows.
Grandfather spits on the Tsar.
When he's asked to serve, father drives off in his Chevrolet.
The road's terminal.
He can't turn back.
The lights dim momentarily and the Jews,
who inhabited this Earth, illuminate
the flesh then flake to ash.
Who's to blame?
The slogans at the march don't seem strong enough,
but the communists are partly right.
Everything's a struggle and to forget
the past is to give up hope.
[APPLAUSE]