[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Susan, that was beautiful.
Thank you all for coming; it's a great pleasure to be here.
I was awake at 4:00 in the morning,
in the Bay Area to make it here in time,
and it's a great honor to read here.
My husband, Bob Hass, and I were last here helping
to dedicate this room, and I've visited Tucson many times
seeing my parents.
I'm going to start with a poem that I wrote for Tucson.
It's in "Seasonal Works," and, as Susan mentioned,
I have been at work on many kinds of experiments.
And this book concludes a tetralogy on the elements,
and so it interrogates language, and the elements as a concept.
How's our mic, is it good?
Yeah, OK.
"As The Roots Prepare For Literature."
"Sound, what is your muse?
Just now, we found a meaning but too soon--
[CLICKING]
Dawn sprinklers start and crickets wheel,
they go down-down, dippy down-down.
Smell of toast in the suburbs, the West is burning.
Our little mother prays in her sleep,
our father rests under his new big scar like America.
Ancestors step through flame to get to them.
Beyond air, the galaxies whirl ceaselessly as picnic salt.
Our childhood sight hath gathered multitudes--
on streets named for forts or saints,
news is brought to foreclosed houses.
The medicated grasses wait.
In other desert, soldiers kill other people's parents.
Here the unemployed wear boots in cafes near terrifying pies
piled high with cream.
Wrens make nests in cholla, Cylindropuntia fulgida.
Spirits stand around in the bodies of doves.
Do you remember learning to spell?
It's best to bring words slowly into English--
"wrad," the root of "root," shines for centuries
underground.
It's not for nothing the shadows are lit when children
are called to literature.
Now word has gone out that you are here as sleepers
curve their heat shapes to the ground.
Hard for you to keep steady, I know.
The roots of your words can see fire, though."