Last night I read with others from Oberlin at the Slow Train Cafe, the theme being, of course, love poetry. This time with a twist: love poetry and translation. So we had a "great feast of languages" -- Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Urdu, Hindi, Shona, Greek, Portuguese, Latin, German, Lithuanian, and I'm forgetting some. What a treat to hear so many different sounds. Oh, and Welsh; what an amazing sound that has. Being a "Jones" I should learn some. Retirement project.
I read from Italian poems by G. B. Guarini, 16th century poet and writer of lyrics for some of the greatest songwriters of his day. Here are the two poems I read (in my translation):
