And this is the last poem, "Prayer to My Father
While Putting My Son to Bed."
"Father of my voice, old humbled ghost, ragged with
earned earth, teach me again to praise
those joys, your last sleep still awakes in me.
Who am I?
Mourner, to assuage, to contend with this ravenous year,
all the betrayers eating the sun, what can I hold to?
What can I tell this boy, who, at moonrise, picked a vase
of asters, purple and white?
Now holding back from sleep, another trusting moment,
listening to my voice, to what it says.
Shall my voice, our voice, say, beware
of the betrayer in the room of your heart, in this room,
where you brought your asters, purple and blue and white,
those plucked stars.
I am the one you have dreamed about,
who has stolen your waters, devoured your air.
That is only the guilty truth.
I must not go back to that, mourning your death
and his death to come, I have given birth to,
and the son's murder, would you and I, and he too, must commit.
But in your memory, father, ghost of my voice,
I choose another theme, equally old.
I speak it simply as I know how, feeling what I feel,
praising the sun, with you awake in my mind,
and this boy here, here, hugging good night,
holding the dark, his dark and mine, with his asters lighting
this morning room for you, old humbled ghost.
It is good.
What I feel is good.
I feel it has always been good.
I hold to it as you held to it.
If only my voice, this poem, this prayer,
could hold you back in life and protect my child
when another and another morning comes."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.