WEBVTT

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I'll read that longer poem
that Taylor had mentioned,

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"Two Thousand Pounds," and there
were some students in a class

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today-- really wonderful
class-- so we got

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to meet the students and stuff.

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It's a longer poem, but 2,000
pounds was really inaccurate.

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After investigation, they
found it was 800 pounds,

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but it had been
published as 2,000--

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I didn't know what to do.

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[LAUGHTER]

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You what I mean?

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But 800's a lot, you know?

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Still a pretty big poem.

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This poem, I tried to use
the traffic circle, which

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is a predominant feature in
Iraq because seemed inclusive.

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It seemed like a good
place to go about this--

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because there are roadside
bombs all over the place.

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Usually under
overpasses because you

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get secondary ricochet shots and
concussion injuries and stuff.

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It's a better place
to place a bomb.

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But oftentimes they are in
traffic circles, as well.

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And this poem tries to using
a cinematic technique--

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verse stanza by verse stanza,
panning around the circle.

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I hope you will see what I mean.

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"It begins simply with a fist--

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white-knuckled and
tight, glossy with sweat.

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With two eyes in a rearview
mirror watching for a convoy.

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The radio, a soundtrack
that adrenaline

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is pushed into silence
replacing it with a heartbeat.

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His thumb trembling
over the button.

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A flight of gold, that's
what Sefwan thinks,

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as he lights a Miami,
draws in the smoke,

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and waits in his taxi
at the traffic circle.

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He thinks of summer
1974, lifting pitchforks

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of grain high in the air--

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the slow drift of it, like
the fall of Shatha's hair.

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And although it was
decades ago, he still

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loves her-- remembers
her standing at the cane

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break where the buffalo cooled,
shoulder deep in the water,

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pleased with the orange cups
of flowers he brought her.

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And he regrets how
so much can go wrong

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in a life, how easily
the years slip by.

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Light as grain, bright as the
streets concussioned of metal.

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Shrapnel traveling
at the speed of sound

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to open him up in
blood and shock--

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a man whose last thoughts
are of love and wreckage

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with no one there
to whisper him gone.

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Sergeant Ledouix of the
National Guard speaks,

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but cannot hear the
words coming out.

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And it's just as
well his eardrums

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have ruptured because it lends
the world a certain calm.

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Though the traffic circle is
filled with people running

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in panic, their legs a blur
like horses in a carousel--

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turning and turning--

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the way the tires spin on the
Humvee flipped to its side.

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The gunners hatch he was thrown
from, a mystery to him now.

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A dark hole in metal,
the color of sand.

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And if he could, he would
crawl back inside of it.

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And though his fingertips
scratch at the asphalt,

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he hasn't the strength to move.

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Shrapnel has torn
into his rib cage,

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and he will bleed
to death in minutes.

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But he finds himself surrounded
by a strange beauty--

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the shine of light
on the broken.

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A woman's hand touching
his face tenderly,

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the way his wife might.

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Amazed to find a wedding
ring on his crushed hand--

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the bright gold sinking
in flesh, going to bone.

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Rasheed passes the bridal
shop on a bicycle with Sefa

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beside him.

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And just before the
air ruckles and breaks,

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he glimpses the
sidewalk reflections

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in the storefront glass.

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Men and women walking
and talking, or not.

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An instant of clarity
just before each

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of them shatters under
the detonation's wave,

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as if even the idea of them were
being completely destroyed--

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stripped of form.

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The blast tearing into the
mannequins who stood as though

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husband and wife
a moment before,

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who cannot touch one
another, who cannot kiss,

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who now lie together
in glass and debris,

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holding one another in their
half-armed embrace and calling

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this love--

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if this is all
there will ever be.

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The civil affairs officer,
Lieutenant Jackson,

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stares at his missing
hands, which make no sense

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to him, no sense at all.

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To wave these absurd
stumps held in the air,

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where just a moment
before he'd blown

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bubbles out the Humvee window.

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His left hand
holding the bottle,

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his right hand dipping
the plastic ring in soap,

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filling the air behind
them with floating spheres,

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like the oxygen trails
of deep ocean divers.

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Something for the children,
something beautiful.

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Translucent globes of their
iridescent skins drifting

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on vehicle exhaust and the
breeze that might lift one

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day over the Zagros mountains--

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that kind of hope.

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Small globes which may
have astonished someone

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on the sidewalk seven minutes
before Lieutenant Jackson

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blacks out from blood loss
and shock, with no one

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there to bandage the wounds
that would carry him home.

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Nearby, an old woman
cradles her grandson,

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whispering, rocking
him on her knees,

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as though singing him to sleep.

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Her hands wet with their blood.

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Her black dress soaked in
it, as her legs give out

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and she buckles with
him to the ground.

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If you'd ask her 40 years
earlier if she could

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see herself an old woman
begging by the roadside

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here with a bomb exploding
at the market among all

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these people, she'd have said,
"To have your heart broken one

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last time before dying, to kiss
a child given sight of a life

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he could never live?

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It's impossible.

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This isn't the way we die."

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And the man who
triggered the button--

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who may have invoked the
prophet's name or not--

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he is obliterated
at the epicenter.

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He is everywhere.

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He is of all things.

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His touch is the air taken
in-- the blast and the wave,

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the electricity of shock.

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His is a sound the
heart makes quick

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and the panic's rush,
the surge of blood

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searching for light and color.

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That sound the martyr
cries filled with the word

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his soul is made of--

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Inshallah.

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But still hanging in the
air over Ashur Square,

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telephone lines snapped in two--

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crackling a strange
incantation the dead hear

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as they wander confused
amongst one another,

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learning each other's
name, trying to comfort

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the living in their grief.

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To console those who cannot
accept such random pain,

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speaking habib softly, one to
another there in the rubble

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and debris, habib over and
over, that it might not be

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forgotten."

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How are you guys doing?

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[APPLAUSE]

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