And I'm going to close--
actually, I'm going to close with the last section
of the poem towards the end.
And it's a part that Susan read too.
And this is the fourth section in that poem.
Manifesto of a Drum.
I am just burning up up here.
Oh my goodness!
I was fine when I started.
But yeah, wow, the energy.
Let me actually get some water.
For as long as a saola can flee, I
have been brooding in my sleep, moving
through a century of leaves.
A voice out of scrying, a river shifting my ears.
Some early mornings are left for listening
to water tones lilting the banks of a primeval lake,
but the lake has been lacquered into the stars,
mirroring its clotted hand down to mine.
What does it take to raise an answer from the grave,
quantify stillness of doubt through unmarked bodies
becoming ciphers for loss?
I gather sharpness of my burn beyond agony for an answer.
It is not to know the shape of what happened,
but to know it happened, it happened, it happened.
Here, I make my light to gaze the trail,
then sing this rain threadbare into storm.
If love is the sacrament of digging,
then here I hold my found into fire.
Thank you all so very much.
[APPLAUSE]