"Life According to Adam," a poem by Bernardo Atxaga
“As their vocabulary increased, so did the wrinkles on their skin.” Novelist Elise Blackwell points me in Atxaga’s direction, noting that he “links the Fall with the acquisition of language”—a Rousseauvian move. Axtaga appeared at the recent PEN World Voices Festival in New York; he writes in Euskera, and his poems and other works are known around the world.
