We're never sure what the manners of a poetry reading are.
It's fine with me if people will clap.
It feels good.
There's a danger that you'll spoil me, though.
This afternoon, I visited a really wonderful class
of undergraduates here--
Claire McLane's class.
And we talked about this new book.
And one of the students asked me to read this poem,
very brief poem called "At the Sangoma."
And in answering her questions about it,
I realized I was more or less uttering an earlier poem.
And I'm hoping that poem will be in my selected poems.
Is it?
Oh, it had better be.
Yes, of course, it will be.
So this is the recent poem that we discussed this afternoon.
"At the Sangoma."
I asked the ance--
I tend to be against too much explaining of poems beforehand.
I will say a sangoma in the Zulu culture,
as the other poem explains, is a seer who consults the ancestors
and tells your fortune and your health and so forth.
"At the Sangoma."
I asked the ancestors
About my suffering.
You
Cannot understand it
You were born to
Too much of the possible.
If I was born free then what
Are you to me?
You were not born free,
To be born free!
The ancestors said,
Would be not to be born
I asked the ancestors
About their suffering.
Because it was ours, now
It is yours as the shape
Of your head is yours.
So I asked the ancestors
About the children.
Is it
Their suffering too?
That
Is your problem they said.
Honor it or not.
So the students asked me, what's the sangoma?