So I think I might do about two more poems.
Are you all doing all right?
Nice.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks.
So one of the things that happened during the yellow rain
investigation was that there was--
like I said, there was testing done.
And there was a scientist out at the University of Minnesota
who did--
after testing some of the samples
did find traces of a toxin, and that
was the one leaf that would then be
used to build the government's case on yellow rain.
But then while that's happening, there
was a whole group of other people
with other political interests who
offered an alternative theory about what
this yellow rain was.
And their theory was that it was just--
it wasn't a biological weapon, is what they said.
But that, in fact, it was just honeybees
defecating on the refugees as they ran through the jungle.
And that was the other theory about yellow rain.
It was just bee poop was the idea.
And so that is the theory that actually stands today.
And so having spent time here in Tucson these last few weeks
and adapting to these figeater beetles that
have been flying around everywhere
and all the bugs and crickets and everything,
I have a special relationship now with these critters.
And this next poem I want to read is an ode to the bees,
is a defense of the bees.
And it has an epigraph too that is
a letter to the editor, which I will also read.
Allied With the Bees.
These people have been living in these areas for all their life,
but they have never heard or experienced something like this
before.
Bees and honey are part of their life.
They and their ancestors have traded
honey for salt, clothes, and other goods
for hundreds of years.
A Letter to The Editor by S Yang, Long Beach,
April 6th, 1984.
Tell them, child, we have hiked these hills
without shoes long enough to hunt alongside the bees,
memorizing the bend, pulse of their voices
when they go dream inside the trees.
We have been crowned with syrup of their toils
so that our syntax might awaken to know
its full range, compassed to the North,
pristine as a nomadic butterfly.
Tell them, daughter, we watched as they buried their queen,
folding her into cashmere of her wings
before swarming the body toward a fire of stars.
And for days, the forest keened to shadow lullaby.
And for nights, we listened for the bees, only
to uncover the hurried hush of our own stranded feet, falling,
forgotten as collateral beings.
Tell them, me ntxhais, we are not misled in our anguish.
What happened to the bees happened to us.