I will do this.
[LAUGHTER]
I will kill the time.
I will take all the time.
[LAUGHTER]
Since I've been working on something here,
I will read something.
It should not take me too long, but it is on the longer side.
This is called "Face: To the Million Plus."
And here, maybe the thing that I really
sort of kept this poem in place is the idea of face.
So sometimes, I mean, in The Iliad,
you have lines like the wine dark sea
and you have this very long story.
But even in a long story with a continuous narrative,
you find that Homer felt like-- he
has to bring some sort of recurring images.
Something has to make us feel like we're
all in the same text.
So with modern poetics, the way we, if you will,
people have abused this idea of how
to maintain interest, how to keep intensity,
is to actually--
it's almost like you put these thumbtacks in a Google map.
So you put these sort of familiar images.
It's almost like a McDonald's in the middle of a highway.
Oh, I know that.
I don't need to eat there.
But I'm glad this familiar thing exists.
[LAUGHTER]
So it's in a way, the long poem is
filled with these moments of familiarity,
just so that you have a sense of where you are.
Right?
So but this is-- so for visual, for the oral effect,
the word face appears.
But the poem is really about the idea of face.
And it's also about the faceless people.
Because we're talking about many American wars--
we are very keen on counting our dead, knowing who they are.
But we're also very clear about the fact
that we're maintaining the facelessness
and the non-human nature of the people we fight
and we end up killing in huge numbers.
"Face: To the One Million Plus."
It's true, we've gotten used to your absent faces.
While the soldiers are enumerated name, age, sex,
branch of service, cause of death.
How did you die?
Who buried you and how?
Are you in heaven now, are you still waiting?
Do your relatives still remember you?
Does the dirt know you, the water drink you?
Do lavender and clematis still shoot out of your remains?
The other day, I saw a photo of a bride and groom.
He is a veteran Marine.
His face is unlike anything I'd ever seen,
and that's after the dozens of surgeries to repair him.
His nose is flattened into two holes
in the middle of his face.
There are no ears.
He has no hair on his head.
Skin covers the whole of his skull.
His eyes peer at her through two slits--
no eyelashes, no eyebrows.
Some of the lips had been recovered.
She must have looked at him this way numerous times,
and looked away in horror.
But she can't do that now.
The picture must be taken.
And it measures her grief.
And horror is what it is when he moves to kiss her
with his non-existent lips, when he
leans into her bosom gratified for the safety he finds there.
Why did she have to keep her promise
for richer and poorer, through sickness and in health,
until death do them apart?
Hasn't death done them apart?
And isn't this worse than death?
Why can't she give up this man, who perhaps was once
handsome and kind?
Give him back to those who sent him to war and say,
you love him.
I was his girlfriend.
His girlfriend-- not his nation.
And why must she keep looking at his maimed face, when it is not
a veil, not a distortion of recovery,
but a truth screaming out its hideous and wordless pain?
And now you, oh million plus, how many of you were burned--
still burning?
This place is now yours.
And you are so many.
What shall it be?
A country, a state, a territory, an authority?
And what shall you be?
A nation, a people, a faith, a sect, helpless like children,
countless like dust, so tenuous that we
have to give you a symbol?
Something like you, scarred and disfigured.
A mother who has no arms for all the arms
that you, oh million plus, have lost,
unhoused for all the houses that fell on your heads?
Yes, we are her children.
We are her already dead parents.
But we know so little about her, this lady, our symbol,
our nation.
How do we symbolize the sectarian violence that ensued,
the run-down hospitals, the electricity that
never comes on?
How to describe the wealth stolen,
the wealth made by those who came to liberate us,
the uranium in the water and in the dirt?
How do we, her children, we the million plus,
fit her in the stories we know--
this woman, our mother sheltering us
in the tent of her meaning?
Every second, a face.
The 60 in a minute, the 3,600 in the hour, the 2 and 1/2 billion
in my projected life.
Each one a face, the apparition of these faces,
the ones born every eight seconds, the ones that
die every 12.
The ones living and the we living and streaming between,
each a face.
And I look at hers, my daughter's, held in my hands.
And how when sleeping beside me, she'd take my hand
and put it on her face.
And she is that face--
the face that adds them all together.
And she is what the human race, the human face
stands for in me--
a drop, a clot, and its infinitesimal divisions, seconds,
and faces of human time here on Earth, past and future
intertwined, redeemable, held by my hands,
asking what we'll do next together this afternoon,
as if time can bind us forever, as if I have not already
done my time and use, as if I can still
bear to look this world I'm leaving in the face.
No aggressor, no victim, you say.
We have become one, the same, you and I, you say.
You had no choice being here, you say.
I must give the other cheek, because you're
obliged to take it, you say.
But you have torn me to pieces, remember?
You have blown me to bits, remember?
You have destroyed my house and village.
Can't you see that all is burned and charred around us?
Why do you keep coming to me, oh brother aggressor?
Haven't you had enough revenge?
Haven't you satisfied your desire
to save, and free, and liberate?
Why do you keep looking at my face when I have none?
No ideas.
No concepts.
Only the weight of things, the fate of things,
the card you carry that has no face.
Something must be in my bones that
makes them brittle, blowing in the wind like ash, something
in my blood that makes it seep out of me
and dry out like leather in the sun.
Or in my flesh, some mistaken fuse
that makes it want to explode into a million
faces in multiplicities of fire and loss.
I see my body shaped in shadow, feel
it struck down against the ground, how it's
whole and enduring, woman like other women,
man like other men, clinging to its breath.
Seeking to see its own face reflected in the changing sky.
This is two more sections.
So what happened to our brother, the soldier with the lost face?
The one whose wedding was attended
by senators and governors?
The one whose disfigurement was supposed
to become an essence of courage and beauty?
Where is he now?
And what happened to him?
What did we expect to happen?
Did we expect the marriage to last?
That he would prosper, and she would stay?
Were we really surprised when we found him one January night
lying face-down on hard snow, dead from smack and booze?
Love, when are you coming to rescue me?
How long must I wait?
And the million plus, my selves, my others,
are they the pores on my skin, the hair on my head,
my eyelashes, my eyebrows, the signature of God on my face?
Are you, Love, always an essence?
Must I find you like a path through a minefield,
a ghostly shadow on a smudged shroud?
Or are you everywhere, and I simply can't see you?
Can I insert you into me?
My body, my mind, my dream-- are they refusing you?
And how do I reach this essence?
How much must I forgive and accept?
What must I untouch, unuse, unbelieve?
Is there a summit that this acquiescence will lead to?
Will the sinking redeem itself like water turning to ice
and rising to meet the sky?
Will you be a current of blessing
that runs through my body, binding me
to others in a fire of joy?
Can I thrust into you, oh Love?
Will you penetrate me?
Touch me?
Hold me?
Empty me?
Mold me?
Scatter me?
When is our arrival, oh Love?
Where will we land?
What will you be so we can find you, oh Love?
Will you know us when you see us, we the million plus,
oh Love?
OK.
All right.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.