[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
My first book of poetry, Calendar Of Dust,
is very much kind of working out my obsession with history.
Because history, after all, is nothing more
than representations, and constructed, and deconstructed
and reconstructed.
So all of my poems have dates.
So it becomes very much a literal calendar,
but it's also very much a way of using
the idea of journal keeping as well,
and a kind of a conflation of both.
Because anybody who's ever written history should--
at least, ought to be--
aware enough that he or she is also
writing herself or himself.
So I'm going to read you the first poem, "Creation."
You know, I grew up in southern New Mexico,
where they exploded the bomb, and I have always hated that.
I have always hated the fact that, somehow,
before I was born, they had already
changed the desert, in a way, irrevocably.
And though the Cold War is over, we
are always going to have to live with the fact
that we created the bomb.
Because someone's always going to want to get
their hands on it.
Anyway, this is a kind of a fictional reconstruction
of being there.
And it's entitled, "Creation."
Trinity Site, New Mexico, 5:30 AM, July 16, 1945.
Let there be light.
And there was light.
The sun was slow in arriving that morning, though it was no
longer dark, was light enough.
And having been born with good eyes, we could see.
We stood on the cool cactus sand, which was once an ocean,
with a patience we rarely practiced.
It was hard to imagine so much water in this place
of permanent thirst.
Motionless, we stood, just as we once waited for our sons
to struggle out of our wives.
The labor wasn't long, but the longest ten seconds
of our lives.
Ten seconds, that was all.
And then the man-made flash, twice as large as the sun,
photographed the moment in fire, flames burning the sands,
slashing the face of the calm.
The ball of thunder strangled the sky,
reached, blasted, bounced on rocks,
became a perfect tower, taller, wider, whiter,
than the Aztecs ever dreamed of or desired.
All the gilded temples where we crossed ourselves
and worshipped perished in the smoke, everything
surpassed in the new incense.
Falling on our knees, it seemed to reach for us.
We prayed for it to stop, yet urged it on.
The air exploded hot, grew cold, and hot again,
invoking Indian winds to rise, to blow,
to break the Earth in half.
Then it was silent.
Motionless we stood, the air throwing us back.
And we remembered ourselves, our past, the boyhood houses filled
with women singing.
We rose, surveyed the aftermath of our great experiment.
There was not much damage.
Rearranged sand, uprooted bushes, a few dead rabbits.
This was, after all, already a desert.
Already named Jornada del Muerto,
plane of the no-personed God.
We had seen and lived.
We blessed ourselves, smelling the victory.
We put on jubilant smiles in the face of the outcome.
But the smiles fell off, unable to withstand the great success.
The sun was slow in arriving that morning.
Those of us who bore witness saw it rise
in the new sky, motionless.
But it no longer gave enough light.
Now, after many years, our eyes have
grown accustomed to the dark.
[APPLAUSE]