I think the last poem will be--
before we start talking--
would be a prose piece translated by Sam Charters.
And it's called "Funchal" which is
a place in Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic.
"Funchal".
"The fish restaurant on the beach,
plain, a shack built by shipwrecked people.
Many turn away at the door, but not the guests from the sea.
A shadow stands in his smoking cabin and fries to fish
according to an old recipe from Atlantis.
Small explosions of garlic, oil running out of the tomato
slices.
Every bite saying that the ocean wishes us
well, a humming from the deep.
She and I look into each other, like climbing up
the wild blooming hillsides without feeling
the least bit tired.
We are on the side of the animals.
We are welcome.
We don't get older.
But we have experienced so much together through the years.
We remember that all the moments when we were good for nothing.
As when we lined up to give the flowers in giant blood,
he had ordered transfusions.
Things that should have separated us
if they hadn't bound us closer, and things we forgot together,
but they haven't forgotten us.
They have become dark and light stones.
Stones in the scattered mosaic.
And now it happens.
The fragments fly together.
The mosaic comes to life.
It's waiting for us.
It's shining from the wall in the hotel room.
A violent and tender design.
Perhaps a face.
We don't have time to perceive everything
as we pull off our clothes.
In the evening, we go out.
The cape's enormous dark blue pool lies thrown in the sea.
We walk in a human whirlpool pushed around
in a friendly way.
Soft controls.
Everyone talking excitedly in that foreign language.
No man is an island.
We become stronger by them but also by ourselves.
By that thing within us that the other one can see.
Something that can only meet itself.
The deepest paradox, the garage flower,
the ventilator to the good darkness, a drink that
bubbles in the empty glasses, a loudspeaker that sends out
silence, a pathway that grows, grows over again
after each step, a book that can only be read in the dark."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.