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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without Gutenberg?

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I have, for me, the wonderful honor of talking to W.S. Merwin.

We've talked before, but now, since the last time,

he has both won another Pulitzer Prize and been named the Poet Laureate of the United States, and his conservancy in Hawaii has been made a national conservancy so the plants and

palm trees that he's been working to preserve are protected now. So it's a very great pleasure

to see William Merwin, W.S. Merwin, with me here.

We're in the Hotel Palomar.

The sounds you may hear are the sounds of a busy hotel restaurant.

And it's an honor and pleasure to see you.

Thank you, Michael.

Now, one of the things I found in the newest book,

which is the Shadow of Sirius, is a poem that's translated from the Latin by the Emperor Hadrian.

And it is a truly mysterious poem, especially because it is the only poem that we know Hadrian to have written.

And I thought we'd begin by listening to it,

because, like much of your own poetry, it's an address to the soul.

This is W.S. Merwin, reading a translation after Hadrian.

Little soul, little stray, little drifter.

...