Maybe one more from this book.
And I'll let you guys go, you guys are--
it's late and you're amazing.
[LAUGHTER]
These are for-- these are ghazals
written in disappointment for Dana International, who
was the Yemeni transsexual Israeli who represented Israel
at the Eurovision competition back in 1999-2000.
And at the time, declaimed the treatment
of homosexuals and transsexuals in the Arab world,
and Palestinians, and Arab Jews within Israel,
but who more recently has become a defender of the Israeli state
and in fairly unambiguous terms.
So these are, I suppose, poems for a future
that didn't materialize.
"Ghazals for Sharon Cohen, Dana International."
In the defile, a Jew or assembling
the signs of a detour.
Landing her parents in the camps,
neither sext nor given to Arabic in the home.
Can you believe it, in Israel of Israel?
In Palestine, we know 400 villages ceased
for that in the beginning.
Do you dream of Yemen, Dana, as I dream of Lebanon?
In Europe, they praise you diva.
Jews have not always fared so well.
Sharon is singing between two languages,
three in your second sex improvised mother tongue.
They say you corrupt the youth of Cairo,
that you collaborate with Mossad.
At home, Likud and Shas denounce you.
Home is burnt sound, disappearance in light.
Later, your songs are banned in Germany.
They say Arabs and Turks are the new Jews.
In a feminine voice, the hazard of presence.
In your house is their shelter in Palestine.
The girl for 2000, beautiful transsexual,
web banners we can all aspire to.
Embody, emboldened, the possible this night,
glamour, freedom's caprice.
As in air or errant, as in love, I
imagine cascading translations incandescence.
What a body wouldn't do shall in time transpire,
breaking lines of people's musculature.
What comes before?
Cherish your singing voice, Sharon.
This moment of dwelling toward the sky.
Thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]