[APPLAUSE]
When she got out--
when she got out of the sleep lab,
she conceived my goddaughter Zoe as she told me
between the taxicab and her apartment.
As I explained in a class, this is entirely
possible in New York City.
Utterly possible.
Yes.
He says, demanded in New York City.
It's true.
And I thought I would write her daughter, my goddaughter, Zoe
Klein, a birthday poem.
Zoe's just old enough now to know
that there is a book in her house
in which there is a poem about her and about her mother.
She's very nice.
"Ultimate immigrant who passed through the Ellis
Island of your mother's hips with a name
slit loose from its dialect of cell and bone,
welcome to the citadel of our lives.
We listened for the hoof beats, your heart, for nine months.
And then your mother nearly died hospitably
early to give you light.
Like an Hawaiian princess, you are carried everywhere--
on a litter, in a carriage, by the arabesque of one's arm.
Your feet have never touched ground.
You, who can't even roll over when you want,
creamy little tyrant, control the lives of all around you.
Sound leaps from your face.
And your ribs quake each time the downy world chafes.
Last week, you first smiled because grown ups acted silly.
Things elude you, but you can grasp absurdity already.
By mistake, you suck your wrist instead of mother's nipple.
We laugh.
With your operatic cries and Michelin man pudge
and seepages from below and eyes alert as twin deer,
you have no sense of self, whatever.
Zoe Klein, goddaughter with a hybrid name,
living in the soft new crook of your mother's arm,
with a face like a Dalai Lama's or a small Neanderthal's.
Born out of a dream by two, you live a dream by halves now.
Slumberous, milky-breathed.
In time, love will answer questions you didn't raise.
A belled marvel, the cat of your inquiry
will stalk through a world brighter and more plural
than you guess, where a baby's fingerprints, loopy weather
systems, one for each tip, will leave
you spellbound that matter could come to this."