The last poem is called "Seven Charms for a New Day."
It's in seven sections, all very short, some no more than three
or four lines.
And it also has an epigraph, in this case, from a Navajo poem.
"Seven Charms for a New Day."
"It was the wind that gave them life.
It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now
that gives us life.
When this ceases to blow, we die.
In the skin at the tips of our fingers
we see the trail of the wind.
It shows us where the wind blew when
our ancestors were created.
Everywhere I discover the signs of ancestors.
Footprints lightly, lightly bending this way in new grass.
Blue air opens around me, wind brushes my eyes,
and wind again enters the circles of my fingers.
Inside the seed of the wind, children are born.
Such a small place, but a heart can be lost in it.
A tree rises from a familiar path, a white tree blossoming
in a thorny road.
What was lost has been here and remains,
kept close in the rising of the light,
in this sudden light rising from the belly
of a long and difficult night.
Sweeping water stirs in the hollow of a rock.
My face enters it, my hands tremble in it.
Everything hides within itself.
Water inside water, flower inside flower,
the bright seed inside the seed.
I invent new signs in the fresh earth.
The voices of birds will comfort me.
The roots of unnamed plants will cure me.
An amulet of stone will protect me if I believe in it.
And if I find you at the end of the long falling of the wind,
I will bend down to touch your face.
I will add my breath like this to yours."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]