I never know what to do next, but I will tell you something.
This is for someone who's here.
I was reading to high schools in California
a few years ago, about the time that registration for the draft
began again, and these students were listening to poetry
and they were listening to me talk about Latin America
and they were very sweet.
And then they would put up their hand and say, Miss Forche,
should we register for the draft?
And I said, well, you remember.
I said, I can't really tell you what to do,
but I can direct you and your memory in the matter,
and you will have to ponder this for yourself.
So we started talking about Vietnam,
and I got these sort of empty looks, and they said,
Miss Forche, we were four years old when the Vietnam War ended
and we don't remember anything.
I remember once my mom said something about it,
but it was sort of like that.
And I said, what years were you born?
And it turns out that some of them
were born after President Kennedy was killed,
and I didn't think anyone was that young
who was going to school, because I had lost track of time
and I thought anyone who's wearing blue jeans
must be all about the same age.
I had become an old person.
So I said well, I don't know how to help you,
but I will tell you that you should read and think very
carefully and so on, so on.
So I wrote a poem for them.
I thought, it's time.
I have become an old person and now I
have to write a poem for the young ones who
are coming of age now.
And so I decided to write one as a member of what
I call my generation, and I decided
to call that anyone, male or female, who was of draft age
any time during the Vietnam War.
So that's from that to this new ones, who
were born after President Kennedy was killed.
It's called Selective Service.
And the other thing, I guess you have mountains here
so I don't have to worry about this one.
In California also I use an image of snow angels,
you know the kids who lie on the ground
and make wings and things, and I got blank looks on that too.
We rise from the snow where we've lain on our backs
and flown like children, from the imprint of perfect wings
and cold gowns, and we stagger together,
wine breath, into town where our people are building
their armies again, short years after body bags,
after burnings.
There is a man I've come to love after 30,
and we have our rituals of coffee, of airports, regret.
After love, we smoke and sleep with magazines,
two shot glasses on the black and white collapse of ours.
In what time do we live that it is too late to have children?
In what place that we consider the various ways to leave?
There is no list long enough for a selective service card
shriveling under a match, the prison that comes of it,
a flag in the wind eaten from its pole,
and boys sent back in trash bags.
We'll tell you.
You were at that time learning fractions.
We'll tell you about fractions.
Half of us are dead or quiet or lost.
Let them speak for themselves.
We lie down in the fields and leave
behind the corpses of angels.
[APPLAUSE]