WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.230 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.230 --> 00:00:03.540 align:middle line:84%
Like many-- like
most of us I think,

00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:09.000 align:middle line:84%
I have been horrified during
the last year by the visibility

00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:11.490 align:middle line:84%
of racially motivated
violence in our country--

00:00:11.490 --> 00:00:17.950 align:middle line:84%
the brutality wrought
by the police at--

00:00:17.950 --> 00:00:22.690 align:middle line:84%
in our name really, in the
name of those who employ them.

00:00:22.690 --> 00:00:26.050 align:middle line:84%
I don't know if we are
experiencing more such violence

00:00:26.050 --> 00:00:29.530 align:middle line:84%
or now the cell phone has
simply made it documentable,

00:00:29.530 --> 00:00:32.350 align:middle line:84%
and it's an extraordinary
thing that many, many people

00:00:32.350 --> 00:00:34.840 align:middle line:84%
have the means to record,
the means of witness.

00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:36.970 align:middle line:84%
In November of last
year, a young man

00:00:36.970 --> 00:00:40.120 align:middle line:84%
named Tamir Rice was murdered
in a park in Cleveland, Ohio.

00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:41.110 align:middle line:90%
He was 12 years old.

00:00:41.110 --> 00:00:43.870 align:middle line:84%
He was playing with a
gun-- a plastic toy gun,

00:00:43.870 --> 00:00:46.730 align:middle line:84%
and the cops
assumed it was real.

00:00:46.730 --> 00:00:49.390 align:middle line:90%
So this is a poem in his memory.

00:00:49.390 --> 00:00:53.200 align:middle line:84%
The first line-- it's a new
poem, not part of the book--

00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:56.980 align:middle line:90%
and the first line pours into--

00:00:56.980 --> 00:01:00.280 align:middle line:84%
the title rather pours
into the first line.

00:01:00.280 --> 00:01:02.660 align:middle line:90%
It's called "In Two Seconds."

00:01:02.660 --> 00:01:06.280 align:middle line:84%
Remember it's Tamir
Rice 2002 to 2014.

00:01:06.280 --> 00:01:09.880 align:middle line:84%
In two seconds, the boy's
face climbed back down

00:01:09.880 --> 00:01:13.270 align:middle line:84%
the 12-year tunnel of
its becoming, a charcoal

00:01:13.270 --> 00:01:16.180 align:middle line:90%
sunflower swallowing itself.

00:01:16.180 --> 00:01:20.140 align:middle line:84%
Who has eyes to see
or ears to hear?

00:01:20.140 --> 00:01:22.870 align:middle line:84%
If you could see
what happens fastest,

00:01:22.870 --> 00:01:25.330 align:middle line:84%
unmaking the human
irreplaceable,

00:01:25.330 --> 00:01:28.660 align:middle line:84%
a star falling into complete
gravitational darkness

00:01:28.660 --> 00:01:30.160 align:middle line:90%
from all points of itself.

00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:33.670 align:middle line:84%
All this, the held
loved body into which

00:01:33.670 --> 00:01:37.240 align:middle line:84%
entered milk and music,
honeying the cells of him,

00:01:37.240 --> 00:01:40.030 align:middle line:84%
who sang to him, stroked
the nap with a scalp,

00:01:40.030 --> 00:01:42.700 align:middle line:84%
kissed the flesh knot
after the cord completed

00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:46.210 align:middle line:84%
its work of fueling into him
the long history of those

00:01:46.210 --> 00:01:48.190 align:middle line:84%
whose suffering was
made more bearable--

00:01:48.190 --> 00:01:51.497 align:middle line:90%


00:01:51.497 --> 00:01:53.330 align:middle line:84%
Those who's suffering
was made more bearable

00:01:53.330 --> 00:01:56.210 align:middle line:84%
by the as yet unknown
of him playing alone

00:01:56.210 --> 00:02:00.620 align:middle line:84%
in some unthinkable future
city, a Cleveland, whatever

00:02:00.620 --> 00:02:02.240 align:middle line:90%
that might be.

00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:04.910 align:middle line:90%
Two seconds to elapse.

00:02:04.910 --> 00:02:07.400 align:middle line:84%
The arc of joy and
the conception bed,

00:02:07.400 --> 00:02:10.039 align:middle line:84%
the labor of hands repeated
until their hands no longer

00:02:10.039 --> 00:02:13.040 align:middle line:84%
required attention so
that as the woman folded

00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:15.680 align:middle line:84%
her hopes for him sank into
the fabric of his shirts

00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:19.790 align:middle line:84%
and underpants, down they go,
swirling down into the mall

00:02:19.790 --> 00:02:21.350 align:middle line:90%
of a greater dark.

00:02:21.350 --> 00:02:24.380 align:middle line:84%
Treasure box, comic
books, pocket knife, bell

00:02:24.380 --> 00:02:26.630 align:middle line:84%
from a lost cat's
collar, why even

00:02:26.630 --> 00:02:30.380 align:middle line:84%
begin to enumerate them when
behind every tributary poured

00:02:30.380 --> 00:02:34.850 align:middle line:84%
into him comes rushing backward
all he hasn't been yet.

00:02:34.850 --> 00:02:38.180 align:middle line:84%
Everything that boy could
have thought or made, sung

00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:41.180 align:middle line:84%
or theorized, built on the
quavering but continuous

00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:43.250 align:middle line:84%
structure that had
preceded him sank

00:02:43.250 --> 00:02:46.280 align:middle line:84%
into an absence in the
shape of a boy playing

00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:49.040 align:middle line:84%
with a plastic gun in
a city park in Ohio

00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:51.140 align:middle line:90%
in the middle of the afternoon.

00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:53.720 align:middle line:84%
When I say two
seconds, I don't mean

00:02:53.720 --> 00:02:55.880 align:middle line:90%
the time it took him to die.

00:02:55.880 --> 00:02:58.640 align:middle line:84%
I mean the lapse between the
instant the cruiser lurched

00:02:58.640 --> 00:03:01.250 align:middle line:84%
to a halt on the grass
between that moment

00:03:01.250 --> 00:03:04.490 align:middle line:84%
and the one in which the
officer fired his weapon,

00:03:04.490 --> 00:03:10.100 align:middle line:84%
the two seconds taken
to assess the situation.

00:03:10.100 --> 00:03:13.070 align:middle line:84%
And though I believe it
is part of the work of art

00:03:13.070 --> 00:03:16.820 align:middle line:84%
to try on at least the
moment and skin of another,

00:03:16.820 --> 00:03:20.660 align:middle line:84%
for this hour I
respectfully decline.

00:03:20.660 --> 00:03:22.100 align:middle line:90%
I refuse it.

00:03:22.100 --> 00:03:24.890 align:middle line:84%
May that officer be visited
every night of his life

00:03:24.890 --> 00:03:27.380 align:middle line:84%
by an enormity collapsing
in front of him

00:03:27.380 --> 00:03:32.450 align:middle line:84%
into an incompressible bloom and
the voice that howls out of it.

00:03:32.450 --> 00:03:38.820 align:middle line:84%
If this is no poem then,
with that voice, erase boy

00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:41.580 align:middle line:84%
beloved of time who
did nothing to no one

00:03:41.580 --> 00:03:43.470 align:middle line:84%
and became nothing
because of it,

00:03:43.470 --> 00:03:47.370 align:middle line:84%
I know that voice is one of
the things we call poetry.

00:03:47.370 --> 00:03:50.810 align:middle line:84%
It isn't to his
killer he's speaking.

00:03:50.810 --> 00:03:52.000 align:middle line:90%