WEBVTT

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And this is the last
poem, "Prayer to My Father

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While Putting My Son to Bed."

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"Father of my voice, old
humbled ghost, ragged with

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earned earth, teach
me again to praise

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those joys, your last
sleep still awakes in me.

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Who am I?

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Mourner, to assuage, to contend
with this ravenous year,

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all the betrayers eating
the sun, what can I hold to?

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What can I tell this boy, who,
at moonrise, picked a vase

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of asters, purple and white?

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Now holding back from sleep,
another trusting moment,

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listening to my voice,
to what it says.

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Shall my voice, our
voice, say, beware

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of the betrayer in the room
of your heart, in this room,

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where you brought your asters,
purple and blue and white,

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those plucked stars.

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I am the one you
have dreamed about,

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who has stolen your
waters, devoured your air.

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That is only the guilty truth.

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I must not go back to
that, mourning your death

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and his death to come,
I have given birth to,

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and the son's murder, would you
and I, and he too, must commit.

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But in your memory,
father, ghost of my voice,

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I choose another
theme, equally old.

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I speak it simply as I know
how, feeling what I feel,

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praising the sun, with
you awake in my mind,

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and this boy here, here,
hugging good night,

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holding the dark, his dark and
mine, with his asters lighting

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this morning room for
you, old humbled ghost.

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It is good.

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What I feel is good.

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I feel it has always been good.

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I hold to it as you held to it.

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If only my voice, this
poem, this prayer,

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could hold you back in
life and protect my child

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when another and
another morning comes."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you very much.

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