Most of the translations are by Robin Fulton and some
by Samuel Charters.
And here is one, by Robin Fulton, slightly revised
by [? Deke ?] himself--
"Golden Wasp."
Well, the title is really a problem
here because it's an insect not many know about.
The name they don't know.
Most people have seen these insects,
but they don't know the name for it.
And I don't think you have exactly the same species
as we have, but it's a sort of wasp
but very brilliant, gleaming, like a jewel.
And I have seen two names for this one.
One is cuckoo wasp, which sounds funny.
And one is golden wasp, golden wasp.
So I choose golden wasp.
Chrysididae is the Latin name for this insect.
It's a minor character in the poem, so don't worry.
This is more a poem about the problem
of how a good, religious impulse can be perverted.
"Golden wasp."
"The blind worm, that legless lizard,
flows along the porch step calm and majestic as an anaconda.
Only, the size is different.
The sky is covered with clouds, but the sun pushes through,
that kind of day.
This morning, she who is dear to me,
drove away the evil spirits as when
you open the door of a dark shed somewhere in the south
and the light pours in.
And the cockroaches dart quick, quick off into the corners
and up the walls and are gone.
You saw them, and you didn't see them,
so her nakedness made the demons run as if they never existed.
But they will come back with a thousand hands, which
make the wrong connections in the old-fashioned telephone
exchange of the nerves.
It's the 5th of July.
The lupines are stretching up as if they wanted
to catch sight of the sea.
It's the church of [? terse ?] eternity in piety,
not according to the letter, as if the implacable
faces of the patriarchs didn't exist and the misspelling
of God's name in stone.
I saw it true-to-the-letter TV preacher who had piled
in the money.
But he was weak now and needed the support
of a bodyguard, who was a well-tailored young man
with a smile tight as a gag.
A smile stifling a scream, the scream of a child
left alone in a bed in the hospital
when the parents leave.
The divine brushes against the man and lights
the flame but then draws back.
Why?
The flame attracts the shadows.
They fly rustling into the flame and join it.
It rises and blackens, and the smoke
spreads out black and strangling.
At last, only the black smoke.
At last, only the pious executioner.
The pious executioner leans forward
over the square and the crowd that
makes a grainy mirror where he can see himself.
The greatest fanatic is the greatest doubter
without knowing it.
He is a pact between two where the one is 100% visible
and the other, invisible.
How I hate that expression 'a hundred percent.'
Those who can never live anywhere,
except from their facades, those who are never absent-minded,
those who never open the wrong door
and catch a glimpse of the unidentified one,
walk past them.
It's the 5th of July.
The sky is covered with clouds, but the sun pushes through.
The blind worm flows along the porch step calm and majestic
as an anaconda.
The blind worm, as if there were no civil service.
The golden wasp, as if there were no idolatry.
The lupines, as if there were no 'hundred percent.'
I know the depths where one is both prisoner and ruler,
like Persephone.
I, often, lay in the stiff grass there
and saw the earth arch over me, the vault of the Earth.
Often, that's half my life.
But today, my sight has left me.
My blindness has gone away.
The dark bat has left my face and is scissoring
in summer's bright space."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.