Thank you very much.
I'm going to start out tonight without wasting much time.
The way I usually do my readings is I read a poem to--
or rather for the men and women who are in prisons today.
So I'd like to start out with one right away, OK?
It's called Cloudy Day.
It is windy today.
A wall of wind crashes against, windows
clunk against iron frames as wind swings
past broken glass and seethes like a frightened
cat and empty spaces of the cell block.
In the exercise yard, we sat huddled in our jackets,
on our haunches against the fence.
And the wind carried our words over the fence,
while the vigilant guard on the tower
held his cap at the sudden gust.
I could see the main tower from where I sat.
And the wind in my face gave me the feeling
I could grasp the tower like a corn stalk,
and snap it from its roots of rock.
The wind plays it like a flute, this hollow chute of rock.
The brim girded with barbed wire with a guard
sitting there also, listening intently
to the sounds as clouds cover the sun I thought of the day
I was coming to prison, in the backseat of a police car.
Hands and ankles chained, the policeman pointed,
see that big water tank?
The big silver one out there sticking up?
That's the prison.
And here I am.
I cannot believe it.
Sometimes it is such a dream, a dream,
where I stand up in the face of the wind like now.
It blows at my prison jacket and my eyelids flicker a little bit
while I stare disbelieving.
The third day of spring and four years
later, I can tell you how a man can endure,
how a man can become so cruel, how
he can die, or become so cold.
I can tell you this.
I have seen it every day, every day,
and still I am strong enough to love you, love myself, and feel
good.
Even as the Earth shakes and trembles
and I have not a thing to my name,
I feel as if I've got everything.
Everything.
That's for my brothers and sisters.