Now I'll read from this recent book.
I'll read the first poem in it, which Alison kindly referred to.
It is called "Poem of Names," but I have to observe that this
is the best water holder I've ever encountered at a poetry
reading, and I would not prove worthy if I didn't use it.
[LAUGHTER]
Think what you like about the poems.
That's a good holder.
[LAUGHTER]
"Poem of Names."
The bad rain fell on Osamu Shimomura.
On the walk home from school it turned his white shirt black.
Quote, "My grandmother got me quickly into a bath.
It likely saved me from death by radiation."
End quote.
Tougaloo's Ernst Borinski would not discuss
His family, killed by Nazis.
Quote, "An area I
Have liquidated, for my mental health."
End quote.
Borinski's grave at Tougaloo a kind of shrine.
Salma begat Boaz and Boaz begat Obed.
Underground river of passion and retrenchment.
Thank you, Eliot, Simon & Hazel, for wanting
To talk with me about my dying some day--
Your dog Bucky had been so cold when you touched his body.
A compliment for me, that conversation.
It almost doesn't matter what we said.
I thought of Milford, your great-grandpa, that time
I asked him, did he believe in life after death?
Quote, "I guess you are my life after death," he said.
A boy named Christian, at a Q. & A. in Texas,
Asked me, the visiting poet, "What motivates you--
What gets you out of bed each day?"
Good question.
The pride of Ernst Borinski of Mississippi.
The shame of Nathan Forrest, of Pillow Hill.
Willie Lee Rose, historian of Reconstruction.
Congressman Pellegrino Rodino, called Pete.
It's the dead people that motivate me, Christian:
Dorothy Pinsky Wright, William Butler Yeats.
As to your name, I remember Don Polk saying to me,
"A lot of Jewish people think they're white,
But they're not."
End quote.
In some ways Yeats was a jerk.
Arphaxad begat Salah.
Salah begat Eber.
"Oh yeah?"
Said Ruby to Don, "Well, most Black people
Don't know they're goyim."
Somebody said about
Rodino and Sirica, "The night-school guys
Are saving the country."
Borinski needed a job
But no white school could offer him a position--
Tougaloo did.
At his famous Forums there,
He asked his students to sit one chair apart
So the white kids from Millsaps sat among them.
Pete Seeger, Ralph Bunche, Joan Baez at the Forums.
Rodino in the House impeaching Nixon.
Pellegrino means pilgrim.
Shimomura
Discovered cells that made a jellyfish glow.
He garnered a million samples in Puget Sound.
A protein in Aequorea victoria, embedded
To glimmer in other life, transformed the study
Of living things.
Years later, the Exxon Valdez
Oil spill left nearly all those Aequorea dead,
A poisoning that Shimomura indicted--
He whose grandma had washed away the ashes.