How's, everybody?
Doing OK?
Good.
OK, good.
I like to read this poem when I read at universities.
It's called "Graduation Day."
I teach it-- I teach at a college.
And so I'm a faculty member.
So at commencement, I have to put on the regalia, right?
Although mine is borrowed.
So we have to borrow it, and it's always the wrong color.
But you have to sit up there.
And when you're faculty and you're facing
and everybody's graduating, and you have to look
attentive the whole time.
It's hours, you have to look attentive.
And it's hard.
It's hard to be attentive because, I mean,
I don't know most of the people graduating, right?
So I'm like, theoretically happy for them.
But actually, I want to be home.
So sorry to break the spell.
But anyway, so one year I decided
I was going to write a poem during the thing,
but I was going to do it just like this in my notebook.
And I was going to with my hand like that.
So I took these notes.
And then I went home and I wrote this poem
called "Graduation Day."
So "Graduation Day."
Drawn by ceremonial obligation up from sleep,
I awoke and stepped into the borrowed black robes
All ghost bureaucrats trained to redirect dreaming
Pretend we do not like to wear.
I drove my black car to the stadium to sit on stage
and be watched.
Watching young expectant spirits,
One by one with dread, certainty, pass before me,
Clouded in their names.
Then listen to no one in their speeches say,
You're welcome for allowing us not to tell you
It's already too late to learn anything.
Or defend whatever accidental instrument in us
causes all these useless thoughts.
Like, if you walked for hours through the vast black avenues
of those server farms
All of us with our endless attention built,
You can almost feel the same peaceful disinterest
As when your parents, talking and smoking,
Raised their heads for a moment to smile and tell you,
Go back upstairs and read the book
you love about myths that explain weather and death.
Now, it is almost June,
And they're finally the children they always were.
So more precise than anyone has ever had to be.
Go forget everything we told you
So you can fix what we kept destroying
by calling the future.
And I don't think I'm going to get asked to be the commencement
speaker, where I teach.
Thankfully.