The last poem I'll read is "Sound Part 4:
Notes on Polyphony."
There's been so many smart and amazing questions
and conversations all day today, and when I wrote this poem,
I thought a little bit more about what is felt
and what's intuitive and sometimes can't be explained.
And maybe sometimes, that's the only shortcoming
of academic life and sometimes poetry.
So I'm also interested a lot in the not knowing or maybe not
being all knowing and then things that are felt,
so I really like to honor that sometimes, too.
Sometimes, I just want to say, I have no idea.
I don't know.
What you said sounds good to me.
Phew, OK, last poem.
"At first, I felt my head was too much with me.
Take it off, I heard a voice say.
Your head, you got to take it off.
So I close my eyes and took my head by the ears and turned.
It came off easy, my head, like all my life,
it was waiting for me to unscrew it.
So I sat it down quietly beside me,
and this allowed my mouth, which all before had been sewed shut,
to open and sing.
What have I to dread?
What have I to fear?
And my hips, torso, and upright arms
trembled at that sudden a cappella.
I want to thank you for hearing this small trickle in a sea.
I am trying to steady myself as I wait.
There's a bored shark coloring the water.
There's a girl cradling her hair, her head somewhere.
She is lost, and someone has left her at the shore
without a song, without a whistle.
There is only her blood and the blood of her siblings.
There is only the sun like the glimmer of the State's buttons
erasing that girl.
You have placed her in my throat,
and now I can reattach my head.
And the girl is inside me.
She can move now as my body moves, my neck, my head
nodding."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]