I'm going to read a couple of heavy poems or maybe just-- no,
I'll read them both.
These poems have to do with a problem that we have,
local and all along the border.
The first one is called "Borderland."
I'm sort of proud of these, in a way,
because I read them in Safford at the junior college
there, the college, whatever it is there, Thatcher.
And after I came out--
there was a little reception for me, and then I went out.
They had bashed in the windows of my car, of my van.
So I think these poems are effective.
[LAUGHTER]
The first one, "Borderland," has to do with the fact
that we feel proud of ourselves because we managed
to live through the summer in Tucson,
in our air-conditioned houses, with our air-conditioned cars,
et cetera, et cetera.
And, at one point, I mentioned monuments
to the transcendence of suffering.
I'm talking about the missions, among other things.
Can you imagine what it was like to wear those robes
and live in those conditions, or to be
a native in those conditions, working almost
as a slave in the heat of the summer?
But those missions were, in a sense, monuments
to the transcendence of suffering.
This has an epigraph from Annie Dillard.
"When too much light falls on everything
a special terror results.
In summer, the sky goes flat and rapacious.
Thirsty doves hurl themselves through it
and mountains rise up against the light's authority,
but they can hide nothing.
Visiting rivers and relatives never stay very long.
What are we possessed by?
Love of a place?
Fear of a place?
Devils?
As our fair flesh burns, we remain where those before us
have bowed to the light and created monuments
to the transcendence of suffering.
But we have no gift for suffering.
That is for the permanent poor who cross the desert on foot
to work or die, who offer us their hands for our labor,
that we might be free to find redemption or pleasure, who
forgive us our lives, our complicity.
Their bodies are candles burning for us so we will not
stumble on our pathway to God."
The other one is in--
[APPLAUSE]