WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.537 align:middle line:84% So I forgot to tell you there are two stolen lines, or quoted 00:00:04.537 --> 00:00:05.370 align:middle line:90% lines, in that poem. 00:00:05.370 --> 00:00:06.930 align:middle line:84% You may have recognized some of them. 00:00:06.930 --> 00:00:08.940 align:middle line:84% We all feel, of course, this is Elizabeth Bishop 00:00:08.940 --> 00:00:10.590 align:middle line:84% from "The Moose," when people are stuck 00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:12.810 align:middle line:84% drawn by that creature-- struck down by the creature outside 00:00:12.810 --> 00:00:13.590 align:middle line:90% on the highway. 00:00:13.590 --> 00:00:15.220 align:middle line:90% And the other is, is there? 00:00:15.220 --> 00:00:15.720 align:middle line:90% It is so. 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:19.295 align:middle line:84% The final line is from Hayden Carruth. 00:00:19.295 --> 00:00:20.670 align:middle line:84% So how are we doing on time here? 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:21.562 align:middle line:90% OK? 00:00:21.562 --> 00:00:22.755 align:middle line:90% Two poems? 00:00:22.755 --> 00:00:24.630 align:middle line:84% So we have one little bit longer, one little. 00:00:24.630 --> 00:00:25.140 align:middle line:90% One short. 00:00:25.140 --> 00:00:25.800 align:middle line:90% Quite short. 00:00:25.800 --> 00:00:31.450 align:middle line:84% OK, so this is another poem in a way about the transmission 00:00:31.450 --> 00:00:33.910 align:middle line:84% of the faraway to something closer to home 00:00:33.910 --> 00:00:36.400 align:middle line:84% because it's concerned with an act of public violence. 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:39.310 align:middle line:84% What happens now can be transmitted, 00:00:39.310 --> 00:00:41.920 align:middle line:84% recorded so easily on cell phone, passed on. 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:47.140 align:middle line:84% It's a great boon to us in terms of the documentation of abuse. 00:00:47.140 --> 00:00:49.810 align:middle line:84% This poem is dedicated to a young man, 00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:51.910 align:middle line:84% Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was killed 00:00:51.910 --> 00:00:53.228 align:middle line:90% in Cleveland by the police. 00:00:53.228 --> 00:00:55.270 align:middle line:84% He was playing with a plastic gun in a city park. 00:00:55.270 --> 00:00:58.360 align:middle line:90% 00:00:58.360 --> 00:01:00.302 align:middle line:84% I didn't know that boy, of course. 00:01:00.302 --> 00:01:01.760 align:middle line:84% I didn't know how to talk about it. 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:03.843 align:middle line:84% I didn't know if I had the right to talk about it. 00:01:03.843 --> 00:01:06.010 align:middle line:84% And I began to think about what happens 00:01:06.010 --> 00:01:09.550 align:middle line:84% when a life is interrupted, how everything, 00:01:09.550 --> 00:01:11.740 align:middle line:84% every tributary that is poured into making 00:01:11.740 --> 00:01:13.630 align:middle line:84% that particular person is interrupted. 00:01:13.630 --> 00:01:16.395 align:middle line:84% And then how whatever that child might have done, 00:01:16.395 --> 00:01:18.520 align:middle line:84% whatever might have been contributed to the future, 00:01:18.520 --> 00:01:19.353 align:middle line:90% is also interrupted. 00:01:19.353 --> 00:01:21.730 align:middle line:84% It's as if at the moment of his death time 00:01:21.730 --> 00:01:27.130 align:middle line:84% implodes in a way, future and past pushing against one 00:01:27.130 --> 00:01:29.560 align:middle line:90% another and emptying out. 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:31.150 align:middle line:90% This is called "In Two Seconds." 00:01:31.150 --> 00:01:34.990 align:middle line:84% And again, the title pours into the first line. 00:01:34.990 --> 00:01:38.290 align:middle line:84% In two seconds, the boy's face climbed back down 00:01:38.290 --> 00:01:41.470 align:middle line:84% the 12-year tunnel of its becoming, a charcoal 00:01:41.470 --> 00:01:44.380 align:middle line:90% sunflower swallowing itself. 00:01:44.380 --> 00:01:46.180 align:middle line:90% Who has eyes to hear? 00:01:46.180 --> 00:01:49.270 align:middle line:84% Who has eyes to see, or ears to hear? 00:01:49.270 --> 00:01:51.580 align:middle line:84% If you could see what happens fastest, 00:01:51.580 --> 00:01:53.740 align:middle line:84% unmaking the human irreplaceable, 00:01:53.740 --> 00:01:56.860 align:middle line:84% a star falling into complete gravitational darkness 00:01:56.860 --> 00:02:01.240 align:middle line:84% from all points of itself, all this: the held, loved body 00:02:01.240 --> 00:02:03.730 align:middle line:84% into which entered milk and music, honeying 00:02:03.730 --> 00:02:06.250 align:middle line:84% the cells of him: who sang to him, 00:02:06.250 --> 00:02:09.310 align:middle line:84% stroked the nap of his scalp, kissed the flesh knot 00:02:09.310 --> 00:02:11.230 align:middle line:84% after the cord completed its work 00:02:11.230 --> 00:02:13.750 align:middle line:84% of fueling into him the long history of those 00:02:13.750 --> 00:02:17.650 align:middle line:84% whose suffering was made more bearable by the as-yet-unknown 00:02:17.650 --> 00:02:20.260 align:middle line:84% of him, playing alone in some unthinkable 00:02:20.260 --> 00:02:24.760 align:middle line:84% future city, a Cleveland, whatever that might be. 00:02:24.760 --> 00:02:26.080 align:middle line:90% Two seconds. 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.740 align:middle line:84% To elapse: the arc of joy in the conception bed, 00:02:29.740 --> 00:02:32.290 align:middle line:84% the labor of hands repeated until the hands no longer 00:02:32.290 --> 00:02:35.860 align:middle line:84% required attention, so that as the woman folded 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:38.650 align:middle line:84% her hopes for him sank into the fabric of his shirts 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:39.940 align:middle line:90% and underpants. 00:02:39.940 --> 00:02:44.410 align:middle line:84% Down they go, swirling down into the maw of a greater dark. 00:02:44.410 --> 00:02:48.040 align:middle line:84% Treasure books, comic-- treasure box, comic books, pocket knife, 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:49.900 align:middle line:90% bell from a lost cat's collar-- 00:02:49.900 --> 00:02:52.360 align:middle line:84% why even begin to enumerate them when 00:02:52.360 --> 00:02:55.870 align:middle line:84% behind every tributary poured into him comes rushing backward 00:02:55.870 --> 00:02:57.670 align:middle line:90% all he hasn't been yet? 00:02:57.670 --> 00:03:00.700 align:middle line:84% Everything that boy could have thought or made, sung 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:03.910 align:middle line:84% or theorized, built on the quavering but continuous 00:03:03.910 --> 00:03:07.330 align:middle line:84% structure that had preceded him sank 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:09.970 align:middle line:84% into an absence in the shape of a boy playing 00:03:09.970 --> 00:03:12.340 align:middle line:84% with a plastic gun in a city park in Ohio, 00:03:12.340 --> 00:03:14.650 align:middle line:90% in the middle of the afternoon. 00:03:14.650 --> 00:03:16.630 align:middle line:84% When I say two seconds, I don't mean 00:03:16.630 --> 00:03:18.830 align:middle line:90% the time it took him to die. 00:03:18.830 --> 00:03:22.000 align:middle line:84% I mean the lapse between the instant the cruiser braked 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:24.160 align:middle line:84% to a halt on the grass, between that moment 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:26.740 align:middle line:84% and the one in which the officer fired his weapon. 00:03:26.740 --> 00:03:29.740 align:middle line:84% The two seconds taken to assess the situation. 00:03:29.740 --> 00:03:32.790 align:middle line:90% 00:03:32.790 --> 00:03:35.820 align:middle line:84% And though I believe it is a part of the work of poetry 00:03:35.820 --> 00:03:39.240 align:middle line:84% to try on at least the moment and skin of another, 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:42.570 align:middle line:84% for this hour I respectfully decline. 00:03:42.570 --> 00:03:44.280 align:middle line:90% I refuse it. 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:46.590 align:middle line:84% May that officer be visited every night of his life 00:03:46.590 --> 00:03:48.930 align:middle line:84% by an enormity collapsing in front of him 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:51.330 align:middle line:84% into an incomprehensible bloom, and the voice 00:03:51.330 --> 00:03:52.980 align:middle line:90% that howls out of it. 00:03:52.980 --> 00:03:56.070 align:middle line:90% If this is no poem-- 00:03:56.070 --> 00:04:00.630 align:middle line:84% but that voice, erased boy, beloved of time, 00:04:00.630 --> 00:04:04.200 align:middle line:84% who did nothing to no one and became nothing because of it-- 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:08.220 align:middle line:84% I know that voice is one of the things we call poetry. 00:04:08.220 --> 00:04:10.080 align:middle line:84% It isn't to his killer he's speaking. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:14.354 align:middle line:90% 00:04:14.354 --> 00:04:17.805 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:17.805 --> 00:04:19.790 align:middle line:90% 00:04:19.790 --> 00:04:21.340 align:middle line:90% So.