WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.280 align:middle line:84% So this is a moment of maximum risk. 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:07.815 align:middle line:84% This poem is about a week old, which 00:00:07.815 --> 00:00:09.690 align:middle line:84% means if you see it again, it will definitely 00:00:09.690 --> 00:00:11.190 align:middle line:84% be a little-- be somewhat different. 00:00:11.190 --> 00:00:14.030 align:middle line:84% But I think it's ready enough to read. 00:00:14.030 --> 00:00:16.830 align:middle line:84% And it begins with thinking about those extraordinary 00:00:16.830 --> 00:00:18.900 align:middle line:84% photographs that have been sent back 00:00:18.900 --> 00:00:24.630 align:middle line:84% to us from the new telescopes that show us realms so far 00:00:24.630 --> 00:00:26.640 align:middle line:84% away, so impossibly, incredibly far away 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:31.950 align:middle line:84% from us and such harmony, such order and beauty among them. 00:00:31.950 --> 00:00:35.050 align:middle line:90% It's called "Diamond Planet." 00:00:35.050 --> 00:00:37.560 align:middle line:84% It also-- it's partly concerned with the-- also partly, 00:00:37.560 --> 00:00:41.430 align:middle line:84% you will find its gestation is on the New York Subway. 00:00:41.430 --> 00:00:43.970 align:middle line:84% A worker once said if he were locked in a prison, cell, 00:00:43.970 --> 00:00:45.720 align:middle line:84% he would still be able to write because he 00:00:45.720 --> 00:00:46.962 align:middle line:90% would have his childhood. 00:00:46.962 --> 00:00:49.170 align:middle line:84% As long as I have the subway, I will be writing poems 00:00:49.170 --> 00:00:51.690 align:middle line:84% because there's a perennial source of disruption, 00:00:51.690 --> 00:00:54.780 align:middle line:90% entertainment, marvel. 00:00:54.780 --> 00:00:55.560 align:middle line:90% "Diamond Planet." 00:00:55.560 --> 00:01:00.810 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.810 --> 00:01:03.390 align:middle line:84% "Those gorgeous photos the new telescope sends 00:01:03.390 --> 00:01:05.820 align:middle line:90% back feel consoling now. 00:01:05.820 --> 00:01:08.340 align:middle line:84% Grand processes happening without us 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:11.220 align:middle line:84% on the edge of this era and every other. 00:01:11.220 --> 00:01:14.130 align:middle line:84% Their beauty, inextricable from how long ago, 00:01:14.130 --> 00:01:17.250 align:middle line:84% how impossibly far away which may 00:01:17.250 --> 00:01:20.100 align:middle line:84% be why the stark announcement on the wheeled lit-up 00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:22.740 align:middle line:84% signboard parked by my corner market rankles. 00:01:22.740 --> 00:01:28.530 align:middle line:84% So the nearest galaxy like ours is 15 million light years away. 00:01:28.530 --> 00:01:32.400 align:middle line:84% A sudden window opened on a vastness we won't ever cross, 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:35.940 align:middle line:84% which may be why a guy on the A train who's either off his meds 00:01:35.940 --> 00:01:38.430 align:middle line:84% or fueled to liquid oblivion is pounding 00:01:38.430 --> 00:01:42.030 align:middle line:84% on a poem framed under acrylic on the car's metal wall. 00:01:42.030 --> 00:01:44.220 align:middle line:84% Nearly wailing on it, backing up, then 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:45.660 align:middle line:90% hurling himself forward. 00:01:45.660 --> 00:01:48.570 align:middle line:84% Forearms and fists smashed against the text 00:01:48.570 --> 00:01:51.420 align:middle line:84% over and over while he moans with such abandon, 00:01:51.420 --> 00:01:53.730 align:middle line:90% we've ceded him half the car. 00:01:53.730 --> 00:01:56.820 align:middle line:90% Can the poem be that bad? 00:01:56.820 --> 00:01:59.580 align:middle line:84% Maybe knowing it's 15 million years at lightspeed 00:01:59.580 --> 00:02:02.040 align:middle line:84% before you're anyplace remotely like home 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:04.200 align:middle line:90% makes a poem seem worse. 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:06.030 align:middle line:84% I don't dare get close enough to read it. 00:02:06.030 --> 00:02:09.750 align:middle line:84% But I admit I'm starting to hate it too for what it probably 00:02:09.750 --> 00:02:11.112 align:middle line:90% doesn't do. 00:02:11.112 --> 00:02:13.320 align:middle line:84% We're just trying to hold the morning a little steady 00:02:13.320 --> 00:02:15.720 align:middle line:84% here, get ourselves to work almost on time, 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:17.370 align:middle line:84% and somebody writes a poem that doesn't 00:02:17.370 --> 00:02:19.050 align:middle line:84% make the distance between a stanza 00:02:19.050 --> 00:02:21.480 align:middle line:84% and the stars feel one bit smaller. 00:02:21.480 --> 00:02:24.330 align:middle line:84% And somebody else has the nerve to publish it on the train, 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:26.970 align:middle line:84% for God's sake, where you can't help but read it. 00:02:26.970 --> 00:02:28.950 align:middle line:84% Even if it isn't brave or reckless enough 00:02:28.950 --> 00:02:31.690 align:middle line:84% to take up the task of naming our situation, 00:02:31.690 --> 00:02:33.990 align:middle line:84% won't even try to make us feel more legible, 00:02:33.990 --> 00:02:39.270 align:middle line:84% or say why we feel-- we all feel so singular and discontent. 00:02:39.270 --> 00:02:42.990 align:middle line:84% Probably the poem I'm afraid to approach doesn't do that. 00:02:42.990 --> 00:02:46.320 align:middle line:84% But we don't need this maniac pointing that out or beating 00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:48.420 align:middle line:84% the poor thing to pulp and shatter. 00:02:48.420 --> 00:02:50.740 align:middle line:84% I can't write that desolate poem either. 00:02:50.740 --> 00:02:53.610 align:middle line:84% And if I could, who'd want to read it on a train surrounded 00:02:53.610 --> 00:02:54.998 align:middle line:90% by strangers? 00:02:54.998 --> 00:02:56.790 align:middle line:84% I only want to tell you, I want to tell you 00:02:56.790 --> 00:02:58.650 align:middle line:84% what I've learned looking at photos 00:02:58.650 --> 00:03:03.330 align:middle line:84% of ancient starlight, what reconfigured the night for me. 00:03:03.330 --> 00:03:06.390 align:middle line:84% A sign to trace the source of a signal from far out. 00:03:06.390 --> 00:03:09.810 align:middle line:84% A steady pulse going erratic in brief pattern beats. 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:11.040 align:middle line:90% Intentional, perhaps? 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:12.090 align:middle line:90% A code? 00:03:12.090 --> 00:03:15.180 align:middle line:84% A new telescope found the flicker was interrupted 00:03:15.180 --> 00:03:20.220 align:middle line:84% starlight blinking at an immense dark planet, orbit of the star. 00:03:20.220 --> 00:03:22.650 align:middle line:84% A planet entirely composed of carbon 00:03:22.650 --> 00:03:25.740 align:middle line:84% under tremendous pressure since that planet was huge 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:27.630 align:middle line:90% and near its star. 00:03:27.630 --> 00:03:30.270 align:middle line:84% And what happens to pressurized carbon? 00:03:30.270 --> 00:03:32.040 align:middle line:90% One vast diamond. 00:03:32.040 --> 00:03:35.460 align:middle line:84% Surface blackened by debris from the winds of space. 00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:38.400 align:middle line:84% But beneath the dust, a nearly unthinkable clarity 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:40.800 align:middle line:84% shot through with those flaws and stresses that write, 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:45.450 align:middle line:84% any gleam more visible, a grand poem containing and increasing 00:03:45.450 --> 00:03:47.460 align:middle line:90% the light of its star. 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:49.140 align:middle line:90% So near. 00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:51.090 align:middle line:84% Imagine when it turns on its axis, 00:03:51.090 --> 00:03:53.910 align:middle line:84% and the continuous sudden filaments of caught starlight 00:03:53.910 --> 00:03:57.480 align:middle line:84% fire every line, vaulting that seeming endless. 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:00.420 align:middle line:84% It doesn't matter how far away it is or that none of us 00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:03.570 align:middle line:90% will ever see it. 00:04:03.570 --> 00:04:07.050 align:middle line:84% None of us ever go there, ever see inside, much less read it 00:04:07.050 --> 00:04:11.460 align:middle line:84% to the end so to have one intact, something close enough 00:04:11.460 --> 00:04:13.980 align:middle line:90% to forever, not ours. 00:04:13.980 --> 00:04:18.329 align:middle line:84% And if it signals, it's only to tell us or anyone it is there. 00:04:18.329 --> 00:04:19.005 align:middle line:90% It is so." 00:04:19.005 --> 00:04:21.520 align:middle line:90% 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:23.310 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:25.040 align:middle line:90% Thank you.