Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed

for you are the only animal

who can think, who can reason, who can read?

I am a child who receives First Communion in Vilno

and afterwards drinks cocoa served by zealous Catholic ladies.

I am an old man who remembers the day in June.

The ecstasy of the sinless, white table clothes, and the sun on vases filled with peonies. Catufé, Catufo de Tavi, voices call,

in various languages gathered in your wanderings through two continents.

What did you do with your life?

What did you do?

Slowly, cautiously, now when destiny is fulfilled,

I enter the sins of the bygone time.

Of my century, in which and not in any other,

I was ordered to be born, to work, and to live a trace.

Hello, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

That was Cheshua Mewosh, reading from his autobiographical poem, Capri.

This is the first show in our four-part series, A Month of Milosch. Cheshwa Milos, surely one of the

world's two or three greatest living poets, is still remarkably vital at 87. His new book,

Roadside Dog, was just published by Farris Strauss and Giroux, and it's a brilliant achievement, experimenting with parables, daybook entries, and mini-fiction.

A month of Milosh will consist of a running history of Miloche and his role in European and American poetry.

...