WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.150 align:middle line:90% "The Year of Mercy." 00:00:03.150 --> 00:00:06.480 align:middle line:84% Michael Broder has been, over the last couple 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:13.860 align:middle line:84% of years, been doing a series of daily poems. 00:00:13.860 --> 00:00:17.220 align:middle line:84% One was the HIV Here and Now project. 00:00:17.220 --> 00:00:20.010 align:middle line:84% And then he started doing the aftermath. 00:00:20.010 --> 00:00:28.090 align:middle line:84% So "The Year of Mercy" was in the HIV one. 00:00:28.090 --> 00:00:32.350 align:middle line:84% And this is, the Pope said, in 2014, he said, this 00:00:32.350 --> 00:00:35.380 align:middle line:90% was the year of your mercy. 00:00:35.380 --> 00:00:36.340 align:middle line:90% "The Year of Mercy." 00:00:36.340 --> 00:00:40.210 align:middle line:84% The news is swift and swift swoops across our minds, 00:00:40.210 --> 00:00:42.670 align:middle line:84% then loves until the next disaster. 00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:47.050 align:middle line:84% The spent storm excels timber, cars, cradles, sodden food, 00:00:47.050 --> 00:00:48.730 align:middle line:90% and sad sobbing people. 00:00:48.730 --> 00:00:52.711 align:middle line:84% The Pope has declared a year of mercy. 00:00:52.711 --> 00:00:53.950 align:middle line:90% One year? 00:00:53.950 --> 00:00:55.570 align:middle line:90% And then what? 00:00:55.570 --> 00:00:57.940 align:middle line:90% A year of retribution? 00:00:57.940 --> 00:00:59.950 align:middle line:90% Why not a decade? 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:01.120 align:middle line:90% A century? 00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:03.010 align:middle line:90% Or a millennium of mercy? 00:01:03.010 --> 00:01:05.349 align:middle line:90% Why not a year of pacificity? 00:01:05.349 --> 00:01:07.660 align:middle line:84% A year of deep, committed loving. 00:01:07.660 --> 00:01:11.260 align:middle line:84% A year of tongue scrubbing of the men and women 00:01:11.260 --> 00:01:14.170 align:middle line:84% who grope us with language as nasty 00:01:14.170 --> 00:01:17.230 align:middle line:90% as their tender prodding hands. 00:01:17.230 --> 00:01:21.220 align:middle line:84% The news twitters away silence and opens hearts to failure 00:01:21.220 --> 00:01:26.290 align:middle line:84% or the possibility of evolution in manners and morals, even 00:01:26.290 --> 00:01:31.420 align:middle line:84% unto that dream of equality, the one slaves understood 00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:36.690 align:middle line:84% could not be a dream, but had to be a reality. 00:01:36.690 --> 00:01:39.000 align:middle line:90%