It's a pleasure for me to read here.
I was very, very warmly received, both by the weather
and by my hosts here.
Thank you very much.
I will read, perhaps in the paradoxical order,
starting with new poems, some new translations,
then in the middle of my reading,
I will read two very short essays.
I like to call them like something
between aphorism and essays.
And then I will end with some poems
from Tremor, from my English book.
So now some new poems.
This one is translated by Renata Gorczynski and Benjamin Ivry,
who is sort of helping Renata.
"Vacation."
"Dark is this summer's hair.
Beach leaves are tense like the strings of a child's violin.
Rain, lost in the long drain pipes of a village church,
noisily weeps.
Young Rembrandt, still unafraid, looks at us from a postcard.
The sea lashes at rocks with such force
that somebody mutters, this means war.
Yesterday, sun evaporated from the bricks.
Two cyclists, unrecognizable under stiff capes,
traversed the bridge.
Green lightnings of katydids glisten in the garden.
Warm asphalt hambly steams, as if a barber
had placed shaving bowls on it.
You sigh with relief.
It is only the worried pilgrims coming home.
They carry the spiced bread of oblivion, exultation silence."