...and after his death his works were translated into Esperanto.

I'm half-done with Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano"
and it's taking its toll on me. His bleak glimpse
into a machine-controlled future still cursed by human nature
is disheartening enough in an eerie Big Brother sort of way
but that's not even what's been making it so hard to read.
The copy itself is over thirty years old and is falling apart.
An entire section thirty-pages long fell out after one session
and the pages are loosening themselves from the binding
more and more the further I go on. It's like in the Roadrunner
cartoons when the Coyote went out on the ledge and it collapsed
behind his every step. I'm being as gentle as I can with it, not taking
it to work to read on lunch break in my car or anything like that, but
it's really no use; this will be the last time anyone reads this
particular copy of the book. I won't be able to thumb through it again
like an old friend, a conquered love, finding highlighted passages
and trying to remember what the hell I was going through in my life
at the time to make me identify with those words. I will never be
the confused Paul Proteus again. It'll just sit on the shelf
like an empty shell of a person staring blankly back at me, mocking
me with its uselessness.

And then there's the third dilemma bringing me down: which book
to read next? I have twelve new ones piled up on top of my bookshelf
waiting their turns to be introduced to the crowd of familiar titles
below, but I'm not sure which venture to pursue first.
There are some shiny new ones that seem like promising chances
at redemption for this latest failure.
And there are some more old ones that I fear may fall apart as well.
I don't know if I can handle that scenario again, but they're mine
for at least this last time
and then they'll be shelved forever, a hazy memory from a too-good
party where you passed out next to a stranger and woke more alone
than Vonnegut in his grave.

It's all on account that I need to own my books, never borrow them.
What if I want them around sometime to keep me company
but can't have them? How very unfortunate
that would be, friend.

And that's just what you are, though I don't deserve it.
It seems I couldn't handle
finally being
understood.