As you heard in the introduction,
I am the child of immigrant parents,
and I thought I would read next a poem that perhaps addresses
a very important issue to me, which is hospitality.
And hospitality is important to me
not only because I'm the child of immigrant parents
who I think came to this country and found
a tremendous amount of hospitality here
and if they were here tonight would want me to reflect some
of that hospitality back to you and welcoming you
into the home of my poetry, but also hospitality
has something in common with the hospital, a place where
I spend a lot of my time.
And I think, unfortunately, we forget
that too much in medicine.
This is a poem that in some sense
I think has to do with hospitality,
and it also reminds me to thank my hosts here
for the tremendously generous hospitality they've shown me.
And I think it's perhaps especially an important moment
for us to think about hospitality
given the debate around immigration
that's happening right now.
And I'm sure it's something here in Tucson that's
quite an important matter of discussion at the moment.
This is a poem called "Outside Fayetteville",
and again, it has something to do
with this notion of hospitality.
Come North to harvest strawberries and corn.
I wonder what this family of four disheveled Mexicans
must think of us.
They buy a few things at a corner store
outside of which are parked two pickups, one
displaying Dixie's stars and bars inside the cab's
rear window.
Never looking up, the little girl perhaps in school
has learned already something that it says about her place.
Her father, still an immigrant, regards it
with a curiosity, a kind of hopeful sympathy
that seems to ask what country have you fled and why?
A Black man walks along the road beneath a billboard advertising
southern pride.
He's shirtless in the blazing, midday heat
and pauses in the shade afforded by the giant, cutout, rippling
emblem.
Sweat is dripping off him like a baptism, the ritual absolving
us of what we never should forget.
The sky glares white above the bold face new economy.
The promise of another better day when all, God willing,
shall be judged not by the color of their skin,
but by their clout.
The Black man, slowly moving onwards, gleams.