Well, they get worse a little.
The next one is a touch more extreme,
it's delightful that the lights are out.
It's a Chinese translation and I was afraid
that there are going to be angry Chinese in the audience
when I read it.
Because I don't know a single character
of this fascinating language.
I work from side by side versions.
Very useful book I have, it has English
on one side Chinese on the other,
and I do various tricks with this.
From the English crib I make a little policy of the sense,
and I permutate the words in this policy
and I lay them out to look as Chinese as I can.
I don't know if you can see at the back,
but it's a very thin slip of text
and a great deal of Chinese white all around it.
Pretty Chinese actually.
And when I come to read it aloud I
try to make it sound as Chinese as I can.
Really I don't have with me my floor length
kimono and my drooping mustache, but you'll
have to imagine that.
Well, this one is called "At the House of Jade,"
and it's in the Chinese of Fan Zhongyan, whom you remember
lived from 989AD to 1052AD.
You do remember, yes I knew you'd remember, yes.
Well, the basic set of words I permutate
is leaves, drifting, cold, house, empty, absence,
lamplight, loneliness.
[IMITATING CHINESE SPEECH] Sleeves--
drift-- I-- house--
absence-- Light-- in--
lonely-- cold-- Lamp--
leaves-- me-- less--
old-- leaves--
Eaves-- empty-- ample--
lies-- How I know--
Eve's-- rift-- alone--
light-- drifting-- light--
in-- empty-- cold--
I shift house--
Light-- my-- lamp--
If she is-- absence--
leaves-- drift-- in--
me--
So the Chinese poem.
[APPLAUSE]
Actually I suppose it's about as indebted to Stockhausen
as to the Chinese, but that's another matter.