[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much for that very kind and generous introduction.
And thank you all for coming to hear me tonight.
I thought I would start with a poem
that I often start with, which has
to do with what my chief theme will
be tonight, which is this relationship between poetry
and healing.
And I've been thinking about poetry
and healing for a long time.
And particularly today, I've had a number
of occasions already to think about it with colleagues
and new friends here in Arizona.
And when I think about the connection between poetry
and healing, I often realize how there
are some wounds I think that only poetry can really
attend to.
And I'm reminded of the events of 9/11
and particularly how many of my patients
came to me with their own narratives,
with their own poems and stories in response
to those terrible events.
And that seems to me a kind of an example of this wound,
if you will, that medicine just can't heal
but yet, somehow, poetry perhaps can.
So this first poem is a poem of my own--
in response to the events of 9/11,
and it's called The Enemy.
And again, I thought it might be a good place to start tonight.
The Enemy.
The building's wounds are what I can't forget.
Though nothing could absorb my sense of loss,
I stared into their blackness, what
was not supposed to be there, billowing
of soot and ragged mall of splintered steel, glass.
The building's wounds are what I can't forget.
The people dropping past them, fleeting spots approaching
death as if concerned with grace.
I stared into the blackness what was not
inhuman since by men's hands, they were wrought.
Reflected on the TV screen, my face
upon the building's wounds.
I can't forget this rage.
I don't know what to do with it.
It's in my nightmares, towers, plumes of dust,
a staring in the blackness.
What was not conceivable is now our every thought,
we fear the enemy is all of us.
The building's wounds are what I can't forget.
I stared into their blackness what was not.