[APPLAUSE]
"Grendel."
All lions must lean into something other than a roar.
James Baldwin, for instance, singing Precious Lord.
His voice is weary as water broken
over his scalp and a storefront sanctified churches baptismal
pool, all those years ago, when he wanted to be somebody's child
and on fire in that being.
Lord, I want to be somebody's child.
And chosen water spilling over their scalp.
Water taking the shape of their longing.
A deer diving into evening traffic in the furrow
drawn in the air over the hood of the car power
and wanting to be something alive and open.
Lord, I want to be alive and open.
A glimpse of power.
The shuffle of a mother's hand over a sleeping child's
forehead, as if clearing the city's rust from its face, which
we mostly are.
A halo of rust, a glimpse of power.
James Baldwin leaning into the word light.
His voice jostling that single grain in his throat
as if he might drop it or already has.
I am calling to that grain of light,
to that gap between his teeth, where many of us
fatherless sleep, and bear and be whatever darkness
or leaping thing we can be.
In James Baldwin's mouth, my difficult beauty, my weakened
warn, my future as any number of angels,
which is not unlike the beast Grendel coming out
of the wild heaven into the hills and halls of the meat
house at the harpies call with absolute prophecy in his breast
and a desire for mercy for a friend, an end to drifting
and loneliness.
And in that coming down out of the hills, out of the trees,
for once bringing humans the best vision of themselves,
which, of course, must be slaughtered.