We're talking in the class today quite a lot
about nonviolence and violence.
And you know, this world you live in
and the students were so insightful about it.
I was very impressed with them because it seems
to be such a perennial problem.
Does the world really getting--
there's just been a recent book, did anybody read it?
That says that actually things are better.
Did you read that book?
Who read it.
I heard a yeah over here.
What's the name of it?
Steven Pinker.
That's it.
What's it called?
I don't remember.
The end of violence or the end of history?
But it says that really things are better,
we're not boiling people in oil.
Right?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
A lot of this book was, to the thoughts in my heart
during the time when I was writing,
and it was during the Bush-Cheney years,
was where is the kingdom of heaven?
And if it is within us as Jesus says then who governs there?
Who governs that kingdom?
So, this was a poem that was written
after I had a falling out with a friend, a good friend.
It's called Government.
"Standing next to my old friend, I
sense that his soldiers have retreated.
And mine?
They're resting their guns on their shoulders,
talking quietly.
I'm hungry, one says.
Cheeseburger, says another.
And they all decide to go and find some dinner.
But the next day, negotiating the two narrow aisles
of the health and harmony food store when I say,
excuse me, to the woman and her cart of organic chicken
and green grapes.
She pulls the cart not quite far back enough for me to pass.
And a small mob in me begins picking up the fruit to throw.
So many kingdoms.
And in each kingdom, so many people.
The disinherited son, the corrupt counselor,
the courtesan, the fool.
And so many gods arguing among themselves
over toast, through the lunch salad,
and on into the long hours of the mild spring afternoon.
I'm the God.
No, I'm the God.
I can hardly hear myself over their muttering.
How can I discipline my army?
They're exhausted and want more money.
How can I disarm when my enemy seems so intent?"
We've been talking a lot about time.
I've seen a lot of old friends here, Rodney and Alison.
And people I haven't seen in a long time.
And those wormholes kept opening,
you know, those wormholes of time you sort of tumbled down
and suddenly it's 1982 or 1994.
And I saw Tom, and I was thinking about our mothers
and, you know, how a life can be so wonderfully long.
My mother died just about three weeks
before I went to China to bring home my daughter.
My mother was the mother of nine children
and I was her oldest daughter.
So, I want to read this poem for her.
It's called My Mother's Body.
"My mother's body.
Bless my mother's body, the first song
of her beating heart and her breathing.
Her voice, which I could dimly hear, grew louder.
From inside her body, I heard almost every word she said.
Within that girl I drove to the store and back,
her feet pressing the petals of the blue car.
Her voice.
First gate to the cold sunny mornings,
rain, moonlight, snowfall, dogs.
Her kidneys failed, the womb where I once lived is gone.
Her young astonished body pushed me down that long corridor.
And my body hurt her, I know that.
She was 24 years old.
I'm old enough to be that girl's mother, to smooth her hair,
to look into her exultant frightened eyes.
Her bed sheets stained with chocolate.
Her heart in constant failure.
It's a girl, someone must have said.
She must have kissed me with her mouth.
First, grief.
First, air.
And soon, I was drinking her, first food.
I was eating my mother, slumped in her wheelchair, one
of my brothers pushing it across the snowy lawn.
Her eyes fixed, her face averted.
Bless this body she made.
My long legs, her long arms and fingers.
Our voice.
Our voice in my throat speaking to you now."