MARK STRAND: Can you get it?
LOIS SHELTON: Mm-hmm.
The first dance.
[LAUGHS]
[SOUND OF STRUGGLING TO ADJUST MIC]
STRAND: My next two bit--
SHELTON: Now, for the awards--
STRAND: Thank you very much.
I think I'll read first and translations.
I've done a lot of translating.
And most recently I've been translating
some Quechua poems, which are Indian poems from Peru.
I'm translating them from Spanish.
I don't know Quechua.
The first one is called "I Am Raising a Fly."
These were written a long time ago.
Some of them are 500 or 600 years old.
"I am raising a fly with wings of gold.
I'm raising a fly with burning eyes.
It brings death in its eyes of fire.
It brings death in its hair of gold, in its beautiful wings.
I'm raising it in a green bottle.
Nobody knows if it drinks, nobody knows if it eats.
It wanders at night like a star.
It wounds to death with its brilliant red
with its eyes of fire.
In its eyes of fire, it brings love.
Its blood shines in the night.
The love it brings to the heart.
Insect of night, fly that brings death, loving it so,
I am raising it in a green bottle.
But that's the story, that's the story.
Nobody knows if I give it something to drink.
If I give it something to eat.
This is a war song.
We shall drink from the trader's skull.
We shall wear his teeth as a necklace,
of his bones we shall make flutes, of his skin
we shall make a drum.
Later we'll dance.
This is called the butterfly messenger.
I asked a butterfly, I sent a dragonfly
to go out to see my mother, to go out to see my father.
The butterfly came back, the dragonfly
came back saying your mother is crying,
saying your father is suffering.
I went myself, I took myself there.
And it was true my mother was crying,
and it was true my father was suffering."