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And then I'm going to
end on a final poem.

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I also had a brother.

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I have a big family, I have
four brothers and four sisters.

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And so one of my brothers was
in Afghanistan for two years.

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And so this poem takes a little
bit of things he's told me

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and things I know
he's dealing with.

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There's a Polish poet
named Wislawa Szymborska.

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So this has an epigraph
at the beginning from her.

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"Forgive me distant wars
for bringing flowers home.

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Why I don't mention flowers when
conversations with my brother

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reach uncomfortable silences.

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In the Kashmir mountains,
my brother shot many men.

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Blue skulls from brown skins,
dyed white desert sand crimson.

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What is there to say to a man
who has traversed such a world?

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Whose hands and eyes
have betrayed him.

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Were there flowers
there, I asked.

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This is what he told me.

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In a village many men
wrapped a woman in a sheet.

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She didn't struggle.

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Her bare feet
dragged in the dirt.

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They laid her in the
road and stoned her.

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The first man was her father.

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He threw two stones in a row.

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Her brother had filled his
pockets with stones on the way

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there.

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The crowd was a hive
of disturbed bees,

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the volley of stones against
her body drowned out her moans.

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Blood burst through the sheet
like a patch of violence.

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A hundred roses in bloom."

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Thank you guys for listening.

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[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]

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