As the boy was clearing his throat to read, my husband whispered that it was such an honor to listen to a Nobel laureate.

“Shhh,” I told him, but I smiled.

The poems were what you might expect from a boy of twelve. There was one from the perspective of a snow leopard, on the brink of extinction. Another about his grandfather and the lessons of his past. The final one was about peace, how it was like a tree that embraced us all in the great sky. The metaphor didn’t quite hold up, but I suppose we all understood what he was trying to say.