I'm going to read one more poem from this book, Constellation
Route, and then I'll move on to some other things.
This is a sticking with that comic book theme.
This is a "Letter Written While Waiting in Line at Comic-Con."
"Klingon, Parseltongue, Na'vi.
People invent imaginary languages,
so imaginary citizens of imaginary worlds
can speak to one another.
Elvish, Ewokis, Dothraki.
You can learn these languages and come to a convention with
your face painted blue, or a leather scabbard bolted
to your back, and talk to people who will understand you."
[LAUGHTER]
"I understand what language feels like when
you're not understood.
More than once I thought some other planet might be my home.
Like last week in an alley, I saw
this one man punch another man until neither
looked like a person.
There are hundreds of reasons like this,
to yearn to be from some other galaxy, century, or dimension,
reasons to put on a spacesuit or wizard's cloak
and hope no one will recognize you.
But it's not these costumes that amazed me.
It's always been the languages, the way
they reach for something that can't be said in our tongue.
In the only language I know, there
are not enough words for parabola or isotope.
Too few phrases to say I'm sorry or I'm glad that I found you.
Though we've been married for years,
I wish we met when we were children.
If we had known each other in the year you spent alone
on Earth without one friend, we could have been aliens together.
I'd have those green four-fingered hands.
You with your glow in the dark antennae, words
in the form of strange whirling noises,
low-chirping machine music, wisps of static,
lamentations of rain.
Only you and I would know what these sounds meant."
[APPLAUSE]