WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.440 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:06.240 align:middle line:84%
This is a poem from a book,
Good News About the Earth.

00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:07.590 align:middle line:90%
This is a woman kind of poem.

00:00:07.590 --> 00:00:10.650 align:middle line:84%
It's the hardest poem
I've ever written.

00:00:10.650 --> 00:00:13.440 align:middle line:84%
And after I wrote
it, I was very glad.

00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:17.400 align:middle line:84%
I like to express gratitude
to Gwendolyn Brooks

00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:19.230 align:middle line:84%
for writing a poem
called The Mother.

00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:20.760 align:middle line:90%
Do you know that poem?

00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:23.280 align:middle line:84%
Because if she had not
written The Mother,

00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:25.935 align:middle line:84%
I would not have been able
to write The Lost Baby Poem.

00:00:25.935 --> 00:00:29.280 align:middle line:90%


00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:34.470 align:middle line:84%
The time I dropped
your almost body down.

00:00:34.470 --> 00:00:38.070 align:middle line:84%
Down to meet the waters
under the city and run.

00:00:38.070 --> 00:00:41.760 align:middle line:90%
One with the sewage to the sea.

00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:45.600 align:middle line:84%
What did I know about
waters rushing back?

00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:51.450 align:middle line:84%
What did I know about
drowning or being drowned?

00:00:51.450 --> 00:00:54.120 align:middle line:84%
You would have been
born into winter.

00:00:54.120 --> 00:00:58.530 align:middle line:84%
In the year of the
disconnected gas and no car.

00:00:58.530 --> 00:01:01.740 align:middle line:84%
We would have made the
thin walk over Genesee Hill

00:01:01.740 --> 00:01:04.590 align:middle line:84%
into the Canada wind
to watch you slip

00:01:04.590 --> 00:01:07.920 align:middle line:90%
like ice into stranger's hands.

00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:12.750 align:middle line:84%
You would have fallen
naked as snow into winter.

00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:15.840 align:middle line:84%
If you were here
I could tell you

00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:20.160 align:middle line:90%
these and some other things.

00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:24.000 align:middle line:84%
If I am ever less
than a mountain

00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:27.360 align:middle line:84%
for your definite
brothers and sisters,

00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:30.520 align:middle line:84%
let the rivers
pour over my head.

00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:33.600 align:middle line:84%
Let the sea take me
for a spiller of seas.

00:01:33.600 --> 00:01:36.570 align:middle line:90%
Let black men call me stranger.

00:01:36.570 --> 00:01:41.160 align:middle line:84%
Always for your
never named sake.

00:01:41.160 --> 00:01:43.560 align:middle line:90%


00:01:43.560 --> 00:01:46.610 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:01:46.610 --> 00:01:50.000 align:middle line:90%