Read a-- this is a poem I wrote a year
or two ago when the Senate hearings on gays
in the military was going on.
And which we watched with interest,
and which had stupid non-consequences.
But it was still satisfying.
You felt that in some way that something
was being accomplished, because you
had to hear all the congressmen and senators say
the word homosexual in public.
[LAUGHTER]
And you could feel you know how arduous that was for them.
[LAUGHTER]
That the word would come halfway up the esophagus.
And it would meet a glottal block.
And then, they would kind of chew it and spit it out.
[LAUGHTER]
And you felt that simply to have these men saying
homosexual and lesbian in public was somehow
or other something was being accomplished
in the realm of language as it would shape reality
in the future.
[LAUGHTER]
And so, that's sort of what it is.
It's also sort of an autumn poem.
And it has details of autumn.
And one of the ways I tell the season
is by seeing what's on special when I walk through Kmart.
And what is on special in the autumn is wading pools.
Those blue plastic pools with the seahorses and starfish.
That's in this poem too.
So anyway, the poem is called Hearings.
Autumn, and the trees decide again they don't need leaves.
Mothers add more blankets to the bed.
Yellow lights in windows of the junior high
mean that night school is back in session.
Tired grownups sitting in the plastic desks learning
to bisect the hypotenuse, how to say spreadsheet in Japanese.
This week, on the televised hearings,
we get to watch our congressmen nervously pronounce
the word homosexual in public.
The committee trying to determine whether queers
are good enough to pull the triggers on machines designed
to foreclose lives contrary to the national well-being.
But the congressman can't pull the trigger on his own tongue
to fire out the word without tripping over it, fumbling,
stumbling into the ditch between home and sexual.
You might say, his defense industry is troubled.
[LAUGHTER]
As if he had a subterranean suspicion, that to say
it might mean just a little to become it.
Which might be right.
Since language uses us the way that birds use sky,
the way that seeds and viruses braid themselves
into a mammal's fur and hitchhike toward the future.
When you say a word, you enter its vocabulary.
It's got your home address, your phone number.
And wait, it won't forget.
The way the parents who finally bring themselves to say lesbian
enter through that checkpoint--
the country where their daughter lives.
Tonight, all over Washington, Senators in mirrors
will practice until they are as fluent saying
homosexual as they already are at saying, Mr. President
and first strike option.
Sometimes, we think the truth is the worst
thing that could happen.
But the truth is not the worst thing that could happen.
Now, it is autumn.
And in stores, the turquoise wading pools--
spangled with bright star fishes and shells--
are stacked against the wall on sale.
Implying what was costly yesterday
is cheap today, and may be free tomorrow.
All our yearnings and our fears, so many sea horses
galloping through bubbles.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.