Venice masks

Thursday 31 December 2015

Year’s End - Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

Wednesday 30 December 2015

Octaves - Osip Mandelstam

I love the formation of tissue
When after two, after three,
Or after four attempts at inhaling
I draw an unbroken breath.

Tuesday 29 December 2015

Meditation on Ginkgo Nuts Left by My Father - Lee Gil-Won

When it reached the sea,
The river quieted for the first time,
After sending up clouds of spray, shaking the rocks,
And stirring up muddy water from time to time.

Sunday 27 December 2015

Of Beauty and Duty - Dante Alighieri

Two ladies to the summit of my mind
Have clomb, to hold an argument of love.

Saturday 26 December 2015

Apple-Pears - Andy Quan

each ninth month of the year
the buds fallen & fruit forming
copper-gold jewels a child’s round cheeks

Thursday 24 December 2015

A Christmas Prayer - George Macdonald

Loving looks the large-eyed cow,
Loving stares the long-eared ass
At Heaven's glory in the grass!

Wednesday 23 December 2015

I approach, and I withdraw - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

I approach, and I withdraw:
who but I could find
absence in the eyes,
presence in what's far?

Tuesday 22 December 2015

from “Octonaires on the World’s Vanity and Inconstancy” - Antoine de Chandieu

Ice glitters like it’s good.
The whole world glitters,
sped towards ends,
we all fall in.

Monday 21 December 2015

Mistletoe - Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

Sunday 20 December 2015

Friday 18 December 2015

Poems from The Tale of Genji (chapter 44) - Murasaki Shikibu

Ah, cherry blossoms! How one's heart tremhles for them when stormy winds hlow
           although anyone can see they themselves care not at all.

Thursday 17 December 2015

De Spectaculis.XXX (While a roused hind was flying) - Marcus Valerius Martialis

While a roused hind was flying
    from the swift Molossian hounds,
and tangled the drawn-out chase by divers wiles,
    before Caesar's feet,

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Archimedes - Friedrich von Schiller

To Archimedes once a scholar came,
"Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;—

Monday 14 December 2015

Publishers - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

And then they pretend like owls
With marble eyes and wizened stupidity
I do not know why they cannot perceive
True art

Sunday 13 December 2015

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 282-343) - Joost van den Vondel

Gabriel:
So be ye faithful, ever rendering thus
Both God and man your service: since mankind
So well belovèd are by God Himself.

Saturday 12 December 2015

Via del Monte - Umberto Saba

In Trieste, where there are many sorrows,
and beauties of sky and cityscape,
there’s a hill called the Via del Monte.

Friday 11 December 2015

Let us go where there are varied crafts - Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Let us go where there are varied crafts
And trades -- shashlik and chebureki,
Where trousers on a sign give us
The idea of a man.

Thursday 10 December 2015

When I was born - Karaikkal Ammaiyar

When I was born and learned to speak
I was overcome with love

Wednesday 9 December 2015

I Will Walk - Anon (Chippewa Indian)

I will walk into somebody's dwelling,
Into somebody's dwelling will I walk.

Tuesday 8 December 2015

The Desert of Atacama VI - Raúl Zurita

Arid plains do not dream
             No one has ever managed to see
             Those chimerical pampas

Monday 7 December 2015

Retirement - William Cowper

Fresh fields and woods! the Earth's fair face,
God's foot-stool, and man's dwelling-place.

Sunday 6 December 2015

Of the Father's Love Begotten - Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore.

Saturday 5 December 2015

To the Tune of To Rouge the Lips - Li Ching Chao

Lonely in my secluded chamber,

A thousand sorrows fill every inch
            of my sensitive being.

Friday 4 December 2015

The Oracle - Walter von der Vogelweide

Beset with doubts, in agony
I sat quite long alone and thought
How from her service I might be free,
Until a comfort gladness brought.

Thursday 3 December 2015

Parting at evening - Richard Outram

The lake is borrowed light,
    Its darkening waters
Lengthen into night;

Wednesday 2 December 2015

February 14th - Saw Wai

Arensberg said:
Only once you have experienced deep pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it heartbreak.

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Winter song - Nichita Stãnescu

You are so beautiful in winter!
The field stretched on its back, near the horizon,
and the trees stopped running from the winter wind ...

Monday 30 November 2015

The Daft-Days - Robert Fergusson

Now mirk December’s dowie face
Glowrs owr the rigs wi sour grimace,
While, thro’ his minimum of space,
              The bleer-ey’d sun,
Wi blinkin light and stealing pace,
              His race doth run.

Sunday 29 November 2015

The way is hard - Lina Sandell

The way is hard, narrow the gate.
But still it stands ajar,
So enter now, before too late,
There's room, whoe'er you are.

Saturday 28 November 2015

Winter Noon - Umberto Saba

At that moment when I was still happy
(God forgive that vast and terrible
word) what almost changed my joy

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Silence - Giuseppe Ungaretti

I know a city
that each day fills with sun
and all is enraptured at that instant

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Autumn - Adam Zagajewski

Autumn is always too early.
The peonies are still blooming, bees
are still working out ideal states,
and the cold bayonets of autumn
suddenly glint in the fields and the wind
rages.

Sunday 22 November 2015

Saturday 21 November 2015

XXII - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

Tico, tico, ticoti, tico, tico, ticoti

In the place of tears I the singer watch my flowers; they are in my hand; they intoxicate my soul and my song, as I walk alone with them, with my sad soul among them.

Friday 20 November 2015

I will walk through the rye - Elmer Diktonius

I will walk through the rye
that sways in the wind
with lead-heavy ears

Thursday 19 November 2015

Your Way - Our Way - The Truth - Zelda Quakawoot

Your way
Tradition is replaced by authority
Respect is replaced by greed
What is happening to this nation,
Is the planting of an evil seed.

Wednesday 18 November 2015

Self-Portrait: Moon and Mind - Tina Escaja

I hold the cerebral cortex.
Electrical sequences naming me
generate my
presence,

Tuesday 17 November 2015

Patong - Abhay K

A promenade of rainbows
ensconced by emerald hills
sand silver white
fine as flour
sirens emerging from the Andaman Sea
as Botticelli's Venus.

Monday 16 November 2015

The servant - Mimi Khalvati

Ma’mad, hurry, water the rose.
Blessed is the English one that grows
                      out in the rain.

Sunday 15 November 2015

Epistle - Marguerite de Navarre

If God gave me the Christ as lord.
Must I another wait upon?
If bread of life is my reward,
Must I the bread of death feed on?

Saturday 14 November 2015

Stop The Violence - Anonymous

Drugs all over under the ground.
Guns, people crying, putting each other down.

Friday 13 November 2015

Common Night - Merdan Ehet'éli

This is a night made from words.
This is a night poured into our spines like pig iron.
This is a night that puts us up in slippers and in our bedrooms inside books.
This is a night that makes our noses shed hellfruit leaves.

Thursday 12 November 2015

Poems from The Tale of Genji (chapters 1 and 2) - Murasaki Shikibu

“We vowed that we would go together
down the road we all must go. You must not leave me behind.”
“I leave you, to go the road we all must go.
The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other.”

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Tuesday 10 November 2015

The Wreck of the "Julie Plante" (A Legend of Lac St. Pierre) - William Henry Drummond

On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
    De win' she blow, blow, blow,
An' de crew of de wood scow "Julie Plante"
    Got scar't an' run below—
For de win' she blow lak hurricane,
    Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow bus' up on Lac St. Pierre
    Wan arpent from de shore.

Monday 9 November 2015

A Love Song from the North - Sarojini Naidu

Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,
Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha,
Dreams of delight that are gone,
When swift to my side came the feet of my lover
With stars of the dusk and the dawn?

Sunday 8 November 2015

Gone with the wind - Marguerite de Navarre

If men offend you in some wise,
Bear the affront light-heartedly;
And, if with calumny and lies,
Let not our thoughts unceasing be.
     Much empty blathering
Prevails; and so, say what they may:
Gone with the wind are such as they.

Saturday 7 November 2015

Change - Raymond Knister

I shall not wonder more, then,
But I shall know.

Friday 6 November 2015

Another Waking - Carl Spitteler

From the nightmare world of dream
I awakened with a scream.

Thursday 5 November 2015

A song about a friend - Vladimir Vysotsky

If your friend just became a man,
Not a friend, not a foe, - just so,
If you really can't tell from the start,
If he's strong in his heart, -
To the peaks take this man - don't fret!

Wednesday 4 November 2015

The Crabs - Brian Vrepont

The crabs are lunching;
An hour I’ve watched, and still they eat,
Pincering microcosms from the scaly rocks,
Time to split-second mouth shutterings
Link Chinamen with chop-sticks;
No disrespect, but Asian they look,
And I on an overleaning rock am humbled.

Tuesday 3 November 2015

The lost one - Meng Haoran

The red gleam o'er the mountains
    Goes wavering from sight,
And the quiet moon enhances
    The loveliness of night.

Monday 2 November 2015

After Trying Many Years - Michelangelo Buonarroti

After trying many years, and then
near death, the able man may know
an image living in the alpine stone.

Sunday 1 November 2015

The Beginning - Mark O'Connor

God himself
having that day planted a garden
walked through it at evening and knew
that Eden was not nearly complex enough.

Saturday 31 October 2015

Truth Is Mute - Sujata Bhatt

Truth is mute, she says,
but you need words to find it.

A bull’s head in water, a mermaid’s split tail –
centuries in silt, and the words that came down to us:
a blue spell of longing, now translucent on paper.

Friday 30 October 2015

She gets up - Anna Kamienska

She gets up, moves away from her closed mouth,
She, immobile for so long,
Walks! Steps carefully, like someone
Getting up after a long, long illness.

Thursday 29 October 2015

Questions by a workman who reads - Bertold Brecht

Who built seven-gated Thebes?
In the books stand the names of kings.
Did the kings drag the boulders there?

Wednesday 28 October 2015

The Praise of Age - Robert Henryson

Wythin a garth1, under a rede rosere,
Ane ald man and decrepit herd I syng;
Gay was the note, suete was the voce and clere;
It was grete joy to here of sik a thing.
"And to my dome2," he said in his dytyng,
"For to be yong I wald not, for my wis3,
Off all this warld to mak me lord and king:
The more of age, the nerar hevynnis blis.

Tuesday 27 October 2015

To Kill An Olive - Mark O'Connor

Nobody knows how long it takes to kill an olive.
Drought, axe, fire, are admitted failures. Hack one down,
grub out a ton of mainroot for fuel, and next spring
every side-root sends up shoots. A great frost
can leave the trees leafless for years; they revive.

Monday 26 October 2015

Asleep in the Spring - Meng Hao-jan

Sleeping in spring, I don’t feel the dawn
though everywhere birds are singing.
Last night I heard sounds, blowing, raining.
How many flowers have fallen down?

Meng Hao-jan [Meng Haoran] (Chinese: 孟浩然) (689 or 691 – 740) China
Translated by Tony Barnstone
Source: Poetry of China

Sunday 25 October 2015

Diwan IV:16 - Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi

Because of your illness, O Lord, our illness
is so great; our illness, misery and pain;

Saturday 24 October 2015

The wish - Anacreon

Niobe on Phrygian sands
Turn'd a weeping statue stands,
And the Pandionian Maid
In a swallow's wings array'd;

Friday 23 October 2015

Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise - Bassey Ikpi

Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise
Like sometimes it was best when
Girls were girls and boys were boys.

Thursday 22 October 2015

A Vignette - Carl Spitteler

A troop of children scales the ridge, and cries
Challenge to April skies.
     "Come on! No fear!"

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Moon - Bak Cheol

Lame Geum-taek
bought a soccer ball two weeks ago.
Three months before, seeing the artificial lawn of the mini-soccer-ground
newly installed in the neighborhood park
he had twisted his head upward, saying: Neat, Neat,
as if inspecting a newly-trimmed grave mound.

Tuesday 20 October 2015

In the seraglio garden - Jens Peter Jacobsen

With perfume heavily laden
The roses droop their heads,
The pine trees are swaying so silently
In drowsy air,
And silvery fountains are slowly playing
So dreamily!

Monday 19 October 2015

If you tenderly love me - Confucius

If you tenderly love me,
Gird your loins and wade across the Chen;
But if you do not love me -
There are plenty of other men,
Of madcaps, maddest, Oh!

Sunday 18 October 2015

Deus meus - Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin

Deus meus adiuva me,
Give me thy love, O Christ, I pray,
Give me thy love, O Christ, I pray,
Deus meus adiuva me.

Saturday 17 October 2015

The Survivor - Primo Levi

Once more he sees his companions' faces
Livid in the first faint light,
Gray with cement dust,
Nebulous in the mist,
Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep.

Friday 16 October 2015

Given in Farewell - Du Mu

So slender, so supple,
      little more than thirteen,

Thursday 15 October 2015

Listening to my moans - Kshetrayya

Listening to my moans as you touch certain spots,
The pet parrot mimics me, and O how we laugh in bed!

Wednesday 14 October 2015

The Calculation Of Life - Jean Antoine de Baif

Thou art aged; but recount,
Since thy early life began,
What may be the just amount
Thou shouldst number of thy span:

Tuesday 13 October 2015

Autumn Love - Li Ching Chao

Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.

Monday 12 October 2015

My homeland - Ibrahim Tukan

My homeland
My homeland
Glory and beauty
Sublimity and prettiness
Are in your hills

Sunday 11 October 2015

I follow a star - Seosamh mac Cathmhaoil

I follow a star
Burning deep in the blue,
A sign on the hills
Lit for me and for you!

Saturday 10 October 2015

What is love? - Anonymous

A love much-enduring through a year is my love,
It is grief close-hidden,
It is stretching of strength beyond its bounds,
It is the four quarters of the world;

Friday 9 October 2015

Thursday 8 October 2015

The Song is Best - Bertel Gripenberg

The song is best that never sounded
In tones, but was gloriously dreamed.
The drink is sweetest that, offered, foamed
In the goblet, but was never downed.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Woods - Liu Qiyu

Reaching each root in sequence
the hidden water is silver-white
advancing in the way cogs catch onto cogs

Tuesday 6 October 2015

De Spectaculis.I (Let not barbaric Memphis) - Marcus Valerius Martialis

Let not barbaric Memphis tell of the wonder of
her Pyramids, nor Assyrian toil vaunt its Babylon;

Monday 5 October 2015

Rouge in appearance - Samuel Hanagid

Rouge in appearance
and pleasant to drink,
mixed in Spain
and prized in Bombay;

Saturday 3 October 2015

Passport - Mahmoud Darwish

They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs

Thursday 1 October 2015

February - Mirela Roznoveanu

An Elegant Manner of Settling Accounts…

I’ve been butchering math formulae and metaphors—
All languages – of both Nature and the World – are in shambles
now. Life looks like an atom
whose particles have been eviscerated.

Wednesday 30 September 2015

The Drover’s Song - Patrick Durack

Cheerily sings the drover
With his stock so fat and sleek
Up to the border and over
His fortune for to seek.

Tuesday 29 September 2015

The tale of the light roan cow - Mary Durack

Have you heard the tale of the light roan cow
With the minus off-side ear
That Paddy found, On neighbouring ground
While mustering far and near?

Monday 28 September 2015

A Box of Clouds - Sonia Phillips

To teach is
To make wings for ideas,
Watching with joy as fearful cocoons break

Sunday 27 September 2015

Sold - Anne E Thompson

I held you,
Your weight light on my hip
As I touched your button nose
With mine,
Peered deep into
Shining eyes,
Because you are my world.

Saturday 26 September 2015

How Heavy The Days - Hermann Hesse

How heavy the days are.
There's not a fire that can warm me,
Not a sun to laugh with me,
Everything bare,

Monday 21 September 2015

When I shall come to you - Cathal O’Byrne

Of the dim woods, inlaid
With the jasper and jade
Of the green light that falls
Through the aisles, o'er the walls
Of the dark leafy fane,

Sunday 20 September 2015

Making Peace - Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."

Saturday 19 September 2015

Enough - Otto Julius Bierbaum

A Knight rode through the ripened grain,
No spurs he had and loose his rein.
The horse that feasted on his walk
Snatched many a ripe and yellow stalk.

Wednesday 16 September 2015

Epistle to Daedalus - Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão

Why you gave to your son plumage wax wings
if the powerfull sun at the sky would undo them?

Monday 14 September 2015

Saturday 12 September 2015

Distant Yet Never So Close - Blanca Varela

distant yet never so close
we walk a sinking earth
lying down on her or simply standing
we feel the bucking of time

Friday 11 September 2015

The Fair Agnete - Agnes Miegel

When Sir Ulrich’s widow in church knelt to pray,
From the church yard toward her floated a lay.
The organ on high did cease to sound,
The priests and the boys all stood spellbound;

Thursday 10 September 2015

The Banana Plant - Euphrase Kezilahabi

The banana plant lies on the ground, no longer of use,
having been cut down, reluctantly, by the workers in the garden.
Children, anxiously, wait till time's up.
There's nothing in the garden,
other than a sorrowful wind
that makes the grass shiver and moan.

Monday 7 September 2015

My Inner Zone: The half moon over Mojacar - Susanne Jorn

A POMEGRANATE
A SMALL TORTOISESHELL
A POMEGRANATE

*

Most wonderfully lovely pomegranate tree.
Most wonderfully beautiful pomegranate.
Love’s pomegranate-red fruit.

Nothing more.

Saturday 29 August 2015

Waiting for the Marines - Fadel K Jabr

Twelve years have passed
And the Iraqis are turning over
Like skewered fish
On the fire of waiting.

Thursday 27 August 2015

Get Drunk - Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid Fardel

Wednesday 26 August 2015

Tuesday 25 August 2015

The Old Gray Wall - Bliss Carman

Time out of mind I have stood
Fronting the frost and the sun,
That the dream of the world might endure,
And the goodly will be done.

Monday 24 August 2015

This sky of lost miles - Ranjit Hoskote

Shield your eyes from this oblong patch of light
where the towers once stood, where now there floods
on our TV screens this sky of lost miles, miles yet to be
– now never to be – redeemed, this sky that showers
a rain of ash and scorched maple leaves,

Saturday 22 August 2015

Grandmother Moon - Ribka Sibhatu

Like once upon a time
here comes grandmother moon
through the window
full of tales and memories.

Friday 21 August 2015

Thread in a Spider’s Web - Coral Bracho

A little stream, drawn by the magnets of air and light,
and flowing like time, like copper forming,
is the thread

Thursday 20 August 2015

Pretty Halcyon Days - Ogden Nash

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Barely Disfigured - Paul Éluard

Adieu Tristesse
Bonjour Tristesse
Farewell Sadness
Hello Sadness

Tuesday 18 August 2015

I Go Walking into a Spring-Tree - Kim Su-Bok

Constantly inclined to start talking to anyone,
sitting idly in a room with the light out,

Monday 17 August 2015

stones - Sjón

i’ve been hit on the head by a stone – my ex-wife has been hit on the head
by a stone in my presence – my old school friend has been hit on the head

Friday 14 August 2015

The Ship, Solid and Black - Juan Ramón Jimenez

The ship, solid and black,
enters the clear blackness
of the great harbour.

Thursday 13 August 2015

Nocturne III - José Asunción Silva

          A night
A night full of hushings, of the curled wool of perfume
     And incanting wing,

Tuesday 11 August 2015

You who want - Hadewijch

You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within.

Monday 10 August 2015

To a Nose - Francisco de Quevedo

There was a man
              stuck
                  to a nose,

Sunday 2 August 2015

On feeing his city - Samuel Hanagid

And this in his youth on leaving Cordoba:

Spirit splits in its asking,

and soul in its wanting is balked;

Saturday 1 August 2015

The Sorrow of Love - William Butler Yeats

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

Friday 31 July 2015

For Tina - Inua Ellams

The day I discovered how she survived the civil war,
how she saw her friends pass like minutes into oblivion,
how she screamed through drop zones and Morse codes
into jungle, dodging bullets, hiding and crying into rain,

Thursday 30 July 2015

The mouths of streets - Anna Kamienska

The mouths of streets are silent, windows go blind,
Cold veins of tracks tremble noiselessly.
In the mirror of wet pavement the sky hangs
With lead clouds full of hail.

Wednesday 29 July 2015

Beauty in woman; the high will's decree - Dante Alighieri

He compares all Things with his Lady, and finds them wanting

Beauty in woman; the high will's decree;
Fair knighthood armed for manly exercise;

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Sunday 26 July 2015

Childhood faith - Einar Westling

Do you still believe in heart,
Nor from childhood faith depart?
Can you pray as in the days of long ago:
"Lord, who loves the children all,
Keep me, guard me, though I'm small"?
Aged mother will rejoice with heart aglow!

Saturday 25 July 2015

Journey and a half - Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya

Have you ever been ordered to strip
In front of a thousand shouting eyes
Forced to lie on your back
With your feet astride

Friday 24 July 2015

The Fairy Well of Slemish - Cathal O’Byrne

Twas the grey of the evening when Shaun came over
The mountain's shoulder by Torloch's Tower,
Like clustered pearls lay the dew on the clover,
One pale star burned thro' that dew-grey hour.

Thursday 23 July 2015

It is war! It is war! - Matthias Claudius

It is war! It is war! O God’s angel, keep it away
and intervene to stop it!
Sadly, it is war—and I do not want it to be my fault!

Wednesday 22 July 2015

SETI - Boghos L. Artinian

Rest in peace, Carl Sagan!
Contact was not imminent when you died,

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Lonesome Night - Hermann Hesse

You brothers, who are mine,
Poor people, near and far,
Longing for every star,

Monday 20 July 2015

The Kiss Across the Ocean - Tomaž Šalamun

O little bird, how tired I am!
Do you want to see everything that I have written today?
New I have an entire factory
and little men dressed in little sackcloths.

Sunday 19 July 2015

To the soul - Yehudah Halevi

Oh, you that sleep in the bosom of childhood,
how long will you rest there?
Know that youth is shaken off like straw!

Saturday 18 July 2015

Friday 17 July 2015

The night’s deep violoncello - Karin Boye

The night’s deep violoncello
hurls its dark rejoicing out across the expanses.

Thursday 16 July 2015

In the night - Joaquín Arcadio Pagaza

It seems like noon, so bright the lustre shed
On the damp forest by the moon's white glow.
The breeze scarce moves yon oak tree to and fro,
That mid a thousand others rears its head.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

The advent of Indra (The Hunter and the Hero - Book VIII) - Bhāravi

Arjun, mighty in his strength,
All impure passions overcame;
And to his holy hermitage,
Rejoiced at heart, great Indra came.
He came disguised, — as come the gods, —
Even like an ancient anchorite,
Wearied by a tiresome journey,
Weak in limbs and weak in sight.

Saturday 11 July 2015

Everything must end - Fujiwara no Ietaka

Everything must end.
Thus the day tries to begin
with the morning bell.

Friday 10 July 2015

Fortunio’s song - Alfred de Musset

If you think I'm going to say
Whom I dare to love,
I cannot, not even for an empire,
Name her for you.

Tuesday 7 July 2015

The little yellow road - Seosamh mac Cathmhaoil

I am sick, sick,
No part of me sound;
The heart in my middle
Dies of its wound,
Pining the time
When she did stand
With me shoulder to shoulder
And hand in hand.

Monday 6 July 2015

The Guitar - Federico Garcia Lorca

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

Sunday 5 July 2015

Diwan IV:17 - Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi

Did heaven’s gates open into the universe
or did earth touch the celestial lights,

Or did the brilliance of the face of a certain notable
shame the luminaries,

Saturday 4 July 2015

Confession of a Stolen Kiss - Charles d'Orleans

My ghostly fader, I me confess,
First to God and then to you,
That at a window, wot ye how,
I stale a kosse of gret swetness,

Friday 3 July 2015

From: Beasts of Nalunga - Jack Mapanje

Now That September 11 Should Define Mr Western Civilisation ...
(for Sarah Maguire & Saadi Yousef)

I remember being summoned to the British Council Office
Once, back home; I’d got the Commonwealth Scholarship

Thursday 2 July 2015

Gas - Natalia Smirnova

look, we intend to croak. but we will just
live on. and on and on and on

Wednesday 1 July 2015

The Hour of the Children - José Emilio Pacheco

The children traffic in a new species of rats,
Ringed like lobsters and colored magenta and sky blue.
Strange flavor at first
But since hunger doesn’t lie
We grow used to baking them.

Tuesday 30 June 2015

The Poems: XXXVI - Hafez

"Thy mouth and thy lip", I asked her, "Me blest when will they make? "
 " Thy bidding in all", she answered, "Shift to fulfil they make. "

Monday 29 June 2015

Earth's embroidery - Solomon ibn Gabirol

With the ink of its showers and rains,
with the quill of its lightning,

Sunday 28 June 2015

Thanks, my God - August L. Storm

Thanks, my God, for all that has been.
Thanks for all You do bestow,
Thanks for all the years that have been,
Thanks for minutes, as they flow.
Thanks for spring days, warm with sunshine,
Thanks for fall days, dark and drear,
Thanks for tears, forgotten oft time,
Thanks for peace, my heart to cheer.

Saturday 27 June 2015

I Emerged from the War Inadvertently - Adnan Al-Sayegh

I am emerging from the age of betrayals
Toward noble weeping for a verdant dream
Sown by pigs and vermin
I am entering the orbit of the poem
Half free and half chained.
It is for you to lament me, with your hired mourners
I need do nothing but point
With Na’ilah’s severed fingers,
Toward the country’s cloak, saluted by gunshots,
And draped upon tribal spears.
The bloody Euphrates will seep
Through your fingers
When you write
“All that the poets write is in vain.”

Friday 26 June 2015

Walls - C.P. Cavafy

Thoughtless, pitiless, indecent,
they put up high, thick walls around me.

Thursday 25 June 2015

The Lattice Gate - Bertel Gripenberg

You call a sonnet poets’ vain self-esteem,
That mingles emptiness with glittered rhyming,
But locks life within narrow walls, confining,
Extinguishes the hearth-flames of the dream.

Wednesday 24 June 2015

Cuauhtemoc - Luisa Igloria

The young sailor
shows us around the visiting
ship, its instruments for calculating
moisture in the air; the numbered masts,

Tuesday 23 June 2015

In a search for a soul - Ana Zgonjanin

Your gardens are hidden beyond the eclipse,
There worlds lie behind the clouds,
Springs, summers in one and the same,
Kiss by coldness of a hell,
The autumns and winters that follow them,
The imperfections that you hide.

Sunday 21 June 2015

Hide not your face - Lina Sandell

Hide not your face from me, Lord, let me now see,
Comfort me, bless me, and when I call hear me!
You are my faithful, compassionate Redeemer,
Aren't you coming soon, aren't you coming soon?

Saturday 20 June 2015

The tooth - Robert Minhinnick

(Amiriya, Baghdad)
In your head I whisper:
A tooth, blue as a cinder
And I ask: Coward,
Whose pain is it anyway?
Your cells are a blizzard,
Your mind a ragbook, yet
I dream you into growth
Luscious as papaya flesh
Around my black seed.

Friday 19 June 2015

Beirut, August 1982 - Ghassan Zaqtan

How I wish he had not died
in last Wednesday’s raid
as he strolled through Nazlat al-Bir –
my friend with blond hair,
as blond as a native of the wetlands of Iraq.

Thursday 18 June 2015

In praise of May - Finn MacCool

May-day! delightful day!
Bright colours play the vale along.
Now wakes at morning's slender ray
Wild and gay the blackbird's song.

Tuesday 16 June 2015

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 192-222) - Joost van den Vondel

Belzebub:
It seems that passion for
This feminine creature hath thy heart inflamed.

Monday 15 June 2015

Lili Marlene - Hans Leip

Underneath the lantern
By the barrack gate,
Darling, I remember
The way you used to wait.
’Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me;
You’d always be
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene.

Sunday 14 June 2015

The white sail - Jill Jones

The city flows
as the ocean gives
its tides. Each day
and evening they move
through streets.

Saturday 13 June 2015

“I Am Not I” - Juan Ramón Jimenez

I am not I.
                   I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,

Friday 12 June 2015

Border Song III - Lu Lun

A moonless sky, wild geese flown out of sight;
The Hun beaten, their prince by night takes flight.

Thursday 11 June 2015

Sleep Peacefully - Alfonsina Storni

You said the word that enamours
My hearing. You already forgot. Good.
Sleep peacefully. Your face should
Be serene and beautiful at all hours.

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City - Durs Grünbein

Why moan about it, Johnny-come-lately? My friend,
When you were born your city was long gone.
Misty eyes don't turn hair grey and you,
Your name: too quick for it, too green.
Seventeen years, a childhood hardly, were plenty
To erase the past. They sealed the wounds all up
In strict and sombre grey; enchantment ceded to bureaucracy.
The Saxon peacock wasn't slaughtered out of need—
Lichens, inexorable, bloomed on sandstone flowers.
They come back like hiccups, elegies: why brood, why bother?

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Other barbarians will come along - Mahmoud Darwish

Other barbarians will come along.
The emperor’s wife will be abducted.
Drums will roll.

Monday 8 June 2015

Stain - Gülten Akin

Here we stand at the messiest point of our time

someone should write us, if we don’t
who will

Sunday 7 June 2015

God speaks to the Soul - Mechthild of Magdeburg

And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected

Saturday 6 June 2015

Mankokosane - Hale Tsehlana

Mankokosane1, pula e ea na
re tla hola neng? ha tsatsi le chaba2

Friday 5 June 2015

Impressions of a traveller - Kao-Shih

In a silent, desolate spot,
In the night stone-frozen and clear,
The wanderefs hand on the sail
Is gripped by the fingers of fear.

Thursday 4 June 2015

Chante-clair - Rabbe Enckell

High in November day flames your golden trumpet.
o herald, many times before now
your sentinel’s cry has summoned men

Wednesday 3 June 2015

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Stony Grey Soil - Patrick Kavanagh

O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.

Monday 1 June 2015

How Was School? - Lindsay MacRae

Mum can’t see why it’s uncool
To ask me cheerfully
‘How was school?’

Sunday 31 May 2015

Come To Me, O Christ - Paramahansa Yogananda

O Christ—Thou rarest flower of hearts—Thou didst sail on the storm-tossed lake of prejudiced minds. Its evil-scented, gloomy thought-waves lashed Thy lily-tender soul. They crucified Thee with their evil. Yet Thou didst shed the aroma of goodness and forgiveness, and didst help them to be purified by remorse, so helping them to become attractively sweet-scented with Thine all-loving Flower-Soul.

Saturday 30 May 2015

The road nonpareil - Nicolae Sirius

The only road I knew without fail was your heart.
I knew it better than the dream in the hymn
Praising spring. Better than homesickness
And despondence, or the wind recapping the psalms
Of movement through fragrant valleys
Joined to restless water-courses.

Friday 29 May 2015

This country nurtured hope - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

This country nurtured hope decayed,
The politician cruises on a 4WD guzzler,
The thief.
Feeling the base of his belly.

Thursday 28 May 2015

Phaedra, Act V Scene 6 (lines 11-83) - Jean Racine

Scarcely had we emerged from Troezen’s gate:
He drove his chariot, and his soldiery
Were ranged about him, mute and grave as he.
Brooding, he headed toward Mycenae. Lax
In his hands, the reins lay on his horses' backs.
His haughty chargers, quick once to obey
His voice, and give their noble spirits play,
Now, with hung head and mournful eye, seemed part
Of the sad thoughts that filled their master's heart.

Wednesday 27 May 2015

Elegy in stone - Marcelo Ensema Nsang

I speak to you of my destiny when I die,
one afternoon, beside the virgin fountain,
at the edge
of my final memory.

Tuesday 26 May 2015

Clara d'Ellébeuse - Francis Jammes

Down the years it’s Clara d’Ellébeuse
I love, who went to old-time boarding schools
and came, warm evenings, under linden trees
to read her magazines of other days.

Monday 25 May 2015

The Ant Explorer - Clarence James Dennis

Once a little sugar ant made up his mind to roam —
To fare away far away, far away from home.

Sunday 24 May 2015

Pentecost - Annette Freün von Droste-Hülshoff

The day was still, the sun's bright glare
Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall
Withered by tropic heat, the air
Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall.
Behold a group, young men and gray,
And women, kneeling; silence holds them all;
They mutely pray!

Saturday 23 May 2015

The City - Eeva-Liisa Manner

How the houses have grown in this city,
the chasms deepened, the water become blacker,

Thursday 21 May 2015

Silken shoes - Jens Peter Jacobsen

Silken shoes upon golden lasts!
I’ve won a maiden fair!
The fairest maiden waits for me!

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 51-95) - Joost van den Vondel

Apollion:
I'll pass my journey thither by nor tell
How downward sweeping through nine spheres I sped.
That swift as arrows round their centre whirl.

Tuesday 19 May 2015

I Loved You - Aleksandr Pushkin

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still,
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet
It burns so quietly within my soul,
No longer should you feel distressed by it.

Sunday 17 May 2015

XIV - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

Only the tzinitzcan is in power, the tzinitzcan arouses me in my affliction, letting fall its songs like sad flowers.

Saturday 16 May 2015

A Silent Mouth - Cathal O’Byrne

O little green leaf on the bough, you hear
       the lark in the morn,
You hear the grey feet of the wind stir in
       the shimmering corn,
You hear low down in the grass
‘The singing Shee as they pass;
Do you ever hear, O little green flame! -
My loved one calling, calling, whispering
       my name?

Friday 15 May 2015

We remember him - Anonymous

When we are weary and in need of strength,
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember him.

Thursday 14 May 2015

Voices are heard - Rafael Felipe Oteriño

Like rolling rings,
or drops of honey, or mirrors,
or teeth unearthed
by raging water
they've begun to rise.

Wednesday 13 May 2015

Far Within Us #1 - Vasko Popa

We raise our arms
The street climbs into the sky
We lower our eyes
The roofs go down into the earth

Tuesday 12 May 2015

Pigtail - Tadeusz Różewicz

When all the women in the transport
had their heads shaved
four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs
swept up
and gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass
the stiff hair lies
of those suffocated in gas chambers
there are pins and side combs
in this hair

The hair is not shot through with light
is not parted by the breeze
is not touched by any hand
or rain or lips

In huge chests
clouds of dry hair
of those suffocated
and a faded plait
a pigtail with a ribbon
pulled at school
by naughty boys.

Tadeusz Różewicz (1921 - 2014) Poland
Translated by Adam Czerniawski

Monday 11 May 2015

A Damascene Moon - Nizar Qabbani

Green Tunisia, I have come to you as a lover
On my brow, a rose and a book
For I am the Damascene whose profession is passion

Sunday 10 May 2015

Sonnet LXXII. A Prayer for Aid - Michelangelo Buonarroti

Oh, make me see Thee, Lord, where'er I go!
      If mortal beauty sets my soul on fire,
      That flame when near to Thine must needs expire,
      And I with love of only Thee shall glow.

Saturday 9 May 2015

Lament I - Jan Kochanowski

Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:

Friday 8 May 2015

For Tony Benn - Julian Dobson

It's not your pipe or plummy voice
nor your posh-boy turned working class
mutation that I celebrate.

Thursday 7 May 2015

Elysium - Friedrich von Schiller

Past the despairing wail
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Outside History - Eavan Boland

These are outsiders, always. These stars—
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before

Tuesday 5 May 2015

To See Him Again - Gabriela Mistral

Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?

Sunday 3 May 2015

Sonnet XXX - Fernando Pessoa

I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,

Saturday 2 May 2015

Through Foulest Fogs - Bysshe Vanolis

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;

Friday 1 May 2015

Stay - Ingeborg Bachmann

Now the journey is ending,
the wind is losing heart.
Into your hands it's falling,
a rickety house of cards.

Thursday 30 April 2015

France - Toru Dutt

Not dead,—oh no,—she cannot die!
Only a swoon, from loss of blood!
Levite England passes her by,
Help, Samaritan! None is nigh;
Who shall staunch me this sanguine flood?

Wednesday 29 April 2015

The Story of the Royal Huntress - T. Ramakrishna

It was a land of plenty and of wealth;
There God's indulgent hand made for a race
Supremely blest a paradise on earth.
A land of virtue, truth, and charity,
Where nature's choicest treasures man enjoyed
With little toil, where youth respected age,
Where each his neighbour's wife his sister deemed,
Where side by side the tiger and the lamb
The water drank, and sported oft in mirth.
A land where each man deemed him highly blest
When he relieved the miseries of the poor,
When to his roof the wearied traveller came
To share his proffered bounty with good cheer.
Such was the far-famed land of Panchala.

Monday 27 April 2015

Sunday 26 April 2015

A Ballad Of Sark - Algernon Charles Swinburne

High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant’s hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold
Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold
Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark
Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark
Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree.

Wednesday 15 April 2015

House of the poor - Mzi Mahola

When I was a little boy
I never questioned why
A solitary path
Led from a poor man’s hut.

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Deluge - Sándor Kányádi

The broken wings of lightning bolts are
lashing my window.
The deluge is knocking.
I'm listening.

Monday 13 April 2015

I saw my country’s walls - Francisco de Quevedo

I saw my country’s walls.
If at one time
they were strong,
now they have
collapsed, exhausted
by the course
of the age.

Sunday 12 April 2015

A plain soing of the Mexicans - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

I alone will clothe thee with flowers, mine alone is the song which casts down our grief before God in thy house.

Saturday 11 April 2015

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 27-49) - Joost van den Vondel

Apollion:
I have, Lord Belzebub,
The low terrene observed with keenest eye.
And now I offer thee the fruits grown there
So far below these heights, 'neath other skies

Friday 10 April 2015

Moorish Ballad - José Zorilla

And there the Sultan stood,
And murmurs heard,
While watching jealously.

Thursday 9 April 2015

The Desert of Atacama V - Raúl Zurita

           Speak of the whistle of Atacama
           the wind erases like snow
           the colour of that plain

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Passer-By These Are Words - Yves Bonnefoy

 Passer-by, these are words.
 But instead of reading
 I want you to listen: to this frail
 Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Eastern River - Peter Huchel

Do not look for the stones
in water above the mud,
the boat is gone.

Monday 6 April 2015

Milestone - Bruce Levitan

So the time has come at last
In years and months, and days and hours:

Sunday 5 April 2015

Easter - Edmund Spenser

Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;

Saturday 4 April 2015

Theme (from Bell Songs) - Carl Spitteler

Bell with tongue of silver tone,
I would make thy secret known -
Cooped with screech-owl, flittermouse,

Friday 3 April 2015

Good Friday - Edwin Morgan

Three o’clock. The bus lurches
round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –‘
he flops beside me – 'right along Bath Street?

Thursday 2 April 2015

Found - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I wandered lonely
Beneath the trees,
And sought for nothing,
But strolled at ease.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

When Philosophies Sleep - Edasseri Govindan Nair

"Everything is fate"
That was father's faith;
He had nothing to do but wait.

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Black roses - Ernst Josephson

Tell me, why are you so sad today?
You have always been so merry and gay!

Monday 30 March 2015

You Have to Fear the Rose - Rafal Wojaczek

You have to fear the rose; it is the mouth
of the wound that bleeds continually inside you.

Sunday 29 March 2015

The Coronation - John O’Donohue

It was a long time ago in another land.
Who could tell how it really was before belief
Came towards you with a hunger that could not see you
Except against white air cleansed of the shadow of earth?

Saturday 28 March 2015

A path in the woods - Anna Kamienska

I don’t trust the truth of memories
because what leaves us
departs forever

Friday 27 March 2015

Melody - Rabbe Enckell

A bird’s warble flies
like a swivel-bait cast over waves.

Thursday 26 March 2015

The Lover - Solveig von Schoultz

My eyes want to kiss your face.
I have no power over my eyes.

Tuesday 24 March 2015

La Chanson du Mal-Aimé - Guillaume Apollinaire

To Paul Léautaud
I was singing this refrain
in nineteen three, not knowing my
love and phoenix were the same,
and if they fled the evening sky
they were reborn when morning came.

One night of London fog and flame
a ne'er do well resembling my
love was passing: up he came
and showed me such a knowing eye
it made me lower mine in shame.

Sunday 22 March 2015

Those Who Carry - Anna Kamienska

Those who carry pianos
to the tenth floor wardrobes and coffins

Saturday 21 March 2015

Prague: The Golden City - Michel Galiana

Songs of gold, songs of blood used to lull your children:
A captive with his lute overpowered a fortress,
A man ever fighting in spite of his blindness,
A prophet whose cause was pleaded by martyrdom.

Friday 20 March 2015

Growth - Nora May French

I twine you, little trellis, close and fond,
       And swing in wistful threads above, beyond,
For air and space to bloom. Be it so.
Ah me!  I love you, but the plant must grow.

Thursday 19 March 2015

Miguel - Cesar Vallejo

I'm sitting here on the old patio
beside your absence. It is a black well.

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Among us all - Charles Pierre Baudelaire

It is essential to be drunk all the time.
That’s all: there’s no other problem.

Sunday 15 March 2015

The Light Gatherer - Carol Ann Duffy

When you were small, your cupped palms
each held a candleworth under the skin, enough light to begin,
                                and as you grew,
light gathered in you, two clear raindrops
in your eyes,
                               warm pearls, shy,
in the lobes of your ears, even always
the light of a smile after your tears.

Saturday 14 March 2015

SINGER(TM) - Joumana-Jo Haddad

Could it be that the old sewing
machine
my mother gave me
would finally come in handy?

Friday 13 March 2015

Grape Vine - Hale Tsehlana

I heard from the grapevine
that your mother is a witch.
they say this was not a natural death
This man was bewitched.

Thursday 12 March 2015

Winter song - Juan Ramón Jimenez

They sing. They sing.
Where do the birds sing, the birds that sing?

Wednesday 11 March 2015

The Leaden Echo (from Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well) - Gerard Manley Hopkins

How to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?

Tuesday 10 March 2015

The Violet - Ludvig Holstein

Sweet flower mine! My little bird!
I see you from my lonely shade.

Sunday 8 March 2015

Nicaea - Gerhard Fritsch

From the Council the Creed.
From the Emperors the wall.
From the Seljuks tiled mosques.

Saturday 7 March 2015

Three Professors - Ludwig Fulda

The first professor split a hair
And lectured as it withered there.

Friday 6 March 2015

Albert And His Savings - Marriott Edgar

One day, little Albert Ramsbottom
To see 'ow much money 'e'd got
Stuck a knife in 'is money-box slot 'ole
And fiddled and fished out the lot.

Thursday 5 March 2015

The Storm - Anais Nin

In the country, the trees bend
Under the weight of the rain
That is falling in huge drops, under the name cheater,

Tuesday 3 March 2015

Swimming Ool - Kenn Nesbitt

Swimming in the swimming pool
is where I like to “B,”

Monday 2 March 2015

That pastry and coffee house in Como - Giampiero Neri

That pastry and coffee house in Como
the teenager actress, hope of our theatre,
had often patronized,

Sunday 1 March 2015

Christ Has No Body - St Teresa of Ávila

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,

Saturday 28 February 2015

The Sea - Victor Eftimiu

The irrepressible and boundless sea
Gets ready for the storm with each foreboding.
She rushes upward, mighty roars unloading,
In robes of sizzling foam is clothéd she.

Friday 27 February 2015

The Vigil - Stefan George

Within the chapel quivers candlelight.
And there the page his vigil keeps alone
Before the altar’s threshold all the night.
“I shall partake when morning dawneth bright
Of all that solemn glory yet unknown,

Thursday 26 February 2015

Franco meditates on an absent lover (Capitolo 21) - Veronica Franco

I said: "My heart, if my own weapons
do this to me, what will those do
with which cruel fortune pierces me?"

Wednesday 25 February 2015

The Garden of Death - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
white as bones

Tuesday 24 February 2015

In Praise of Self-Deprecation - Wislawa Szymborska

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

Monday 23 February 2015

The Place Where We Are Right - Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

Sunday 22 February 2015

Ode - Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Saturday 21 February 2015

The Fairy Lough - Moira O’Neill

Loughhareema! Loughareema
Lies so high among the heather;
A little lough, a dark lough,
The wather's black and deep.
Ould herons go a-fishin' there,
An' sea-gulls all together
Float roun' the one green island
On the fairy lough asleep.

Friday 20 February 2015

Vita Nuova - Jón Thoroddsen

Outside the day is blue and bright, but inside Sorrow sits and tells tales to the Prisoner. The shadows gather in the corner and listen.

Thursday 19 February 2015

Italia, Italia! O tu cui die la sorte - Vincenzo da Filicaja

Italia! thou, by lavish Nature graced
With ill-starr’d beauty, which to thee hath been
A fatal dowry, whose effects are traced
In the deep sorrows graven on thy mien;

Wednesday 18 February 2015

I hear in the night - Holger Drachmann

I hear in the night
From the sleeping forest
A cry: Ah help me
My God!
I listen trembling,
Cannot sleep,
They call me, I hasten
Outside.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Summer Evening at Sirmione - George Gömöri

Already past the lovelier half of life
but on my way towards distant Ithaca,

Monday 16 February 2015

Doing Nothing - Roderic Quinn

With the sorrow on me
Neighbours come and go —
Think me vain and foolish
Nursing up my woe.

Sunday 15 February 2015

The Wanderers - Robert Buchanan

God’s blessing on poor ship-folk! Peace and prayer
     Fall on their eyelids till they close in sleep!

Saturday 14 February 2015

A Zacinto - Ugo Foscolo

I'll never step ashore and feel your beach
the way I felt it as a barefoot child,

Friday 13 February 2015

The Grey Feet of the Wind - Cathal O’Byrne

I followed in the track of the Grey Feet
     of The Wind,
Where Black Clouds ran across the Moon
     adown a Sullen Sky
Like a Herd of Frightened Cattle with
     Harrying Wolves behind
And dark pines stretched gaunt arms to
     me as I went shuddering by.

Thursday 12 February 2015

The Mu'allaqat - Baha ad-Din Zuhayr

“Does the blackened ruin, situated in the stony ground
between Durraj and Mutathallam, which did not speak to me,
when addressed, belong to the abode of Ummi Awfa?

“And is it her dwelling at the two stony meadows,
seeming as though they were the renewed tattoo marks
in the sinews of the wrist?

“The wild cows and the white deer are wandering about there,
one herd behind the other, while their young are springing up
from every lying-down place.

“I stood again near it, (the encampment of the tribe of Awfa)
after an absence of twenty years, and with some efforts,
I know her abode again after thinking awhile.

“I recognized the three stones blackened by fire at the place
where the kettle used to be placed at night, and the trench round the encampment,
which had not burst, like the source of a pool.

“And when I recognized the encampment I said to its site,
"Now good morning, oh spot;
may you be safe from dangers.

“Look, oh my friend! do you see any women travelling on camels,
going over the high ground above
the stream of Jurthum?1

“They have covered their howdahs with coverlets of high value,
and with a thin screen, the fringes of which are red,
resembling blood.

“And they inclined toward the valley of Sooban,
ascending the centre of it, and in their faces were the fascinating looks
of a soft-bodied person brought up in easy circumstances.

“They arose early in the morning and got up at dawn,
and they went straight to the valley of Rass as the hand goes
unswervingly to the mouth, when eating.

“And amongst them is a place of amusement for the far-sighted one,
and a pleasant sight for the eye of the looker who
looks attentively.

“As if the pieces of dyed wool which they left in every
place in which they halted, were the seeds of night-shade
which have not been crushed.

“When they arrived at the water, the mass of which was
blue from intense purity, they laid down their walking sticks,
like the dweller who has pitched his tents.

“They kept the hill of Qanan and the rough ground about it on their hand;
while there are many, dwelling in Qanan,
the shedding of whose blood is lawful and unlawful.2

“They came out from the valley of Sooban,
then they crossed it, riding in every Qainian howdah
new and widened.

“Then I swear by the temple, round which walk the men
who built it from the tribes
of Quraysh and Turhum.3

“An oath, that you are verily two excellent chiefs, who
are found worthy of honour in every condition,
between ease and distress.4

“The two endeavourers from the tribe of Ghaiz bin Murrah
strove in making peace after the connection between the
tribes had become broken, on account of the shedding of blood.

“You repaired with peace the condition of the tribes of
“Abs and Zubyan, after they had fought with one another,
and ground up the perfume of Manshim between them.5

“And indeed you said, "If we bring about peace perfectly by the spending
of money and the conferring of benefits, and by good words,
we shall be safe from the danger of the two tribes, destroying each other."

“You occupied by reason of this the best of positions,
and became far from the reproach of being
undutiful and sinful.

“And you became great in the high nobility of Ma“add;
may you be guided in the right way; and he who spends his
treasure of glory will become great.

“The memory of the wounds is obliterated by the hundreds
of camels, and he, who commenced paying off the blood money
by instalments, was not guilty of it.

“One tribe pays it to another tribe as an indemnity,
while they who gave the indemnity did not shed blood sufficient for
the filling of a cupping glass.

“Then there was being driven to them from the property
you inherited, a booty of various sorts from young camels
with slit ears.

“Now, convey from me to the tribe of Zubyan and their
allies a message,- ‘Verily you have sworn by every sort of
oath to keep the peace.’

“Do not conceal from God what is in your breast that
it may be hidden; whatever is concealed,
God knows all about it.

“Either it will be put off and placed recorded in a book,
and preserved there until the judgement day;
or the punishment be hastened and so he will take revenge.

“And war is not but what you have learnt it to be,
and what you have experienced, and what is said concerning it,
is not a story based on suppositions.

“When you stir it up, you will stir it up as an accursed
thing, and it will become greedy when you excite its greed
and it will rage fiercely.

“Then it will grind you as the grinding of the upper millstone
against the lower, and it will conceive immediately after
one birth and it will produce twins.6

“By my life I swear, how good a tribe it is upon whom
Husain Bin Zamzam brought an injury by committing a
crime which did not please them.7

“And he had concealed his hatred, and did not display it,
and did not proceed to carry out his intention until he got a
good opportunity.

“And he said, ‘will perform my object of avenging myself,
and I will guard myself from my enemy with a thousand
bridled horses behind me.’

“Then he attacked his victim from ‘Abs, but did not cause
fear to the people of the many houses, near which death had
thrown down his baggage.8

“They allowed their animals to graze until when the interval
between the hours of drinking was finished, they took them to the deep pool,
which is divided by weapons and by shedding of blood.9

“They accomplished their object amongst themselves,
then they led the animals back to the pasture of unwholesome
indigestible grass.

“I have grown weary of the troubles of life;
and he, who lives eighty years will, may you have no father
if you doubt10 grow weary.

“And I know what has happened today and yesterday,
before it, but verily, of the knowledge of what will happen
tomorrow; I am ignorant.

“I see death is like the blundering of a blind camel;-
him whom he meets he kills, and he whom he misses lives
and will become old.

“And he who does not act with kindness in many affairs
will be torn by teeth
and trampled under foot.

“And he, who makes benevolent acts intervene before honour,
increases his honour;
and he, who does not avoid abuse, will be abused.

“He, who is possessed of plenty, and is miserly with his
great wealth toward his people, will be dispensed with,
and abused.

“He who keeps his word, will not be reviled;
and he whose heart is guided to self-satisfying benevolence
will not stammer.

“And he who dreads the causes of death, they will reach
him, even if he ascends the tracts of the heavens
with a ladder.

“And he, who shows kindness to one not deserving it, his
praise will be a reproach against him, and he will repent of
having shown kindness.

“And he who rebels against the butt ends of the spears,
then verily he will have to obey the spear points joined to
every long spear shaft.11

“And he who does not repulse with his weapons from his
tank, will have it broken; and he who does not oppress the
people will be oppressed.

“And he who travels should consider his friend an enemy;
and he who does not respect himself
will not be respected.

“And he, who is always seeking to bear the burdens of
other people, and does not excuse himself from it,
will one day by reason of his abasement, repent.

“And whatever of character there is in a man,
even though he thinks it concealed from people,
it is known.

“He, who does not cease asking people to carry him,
and does not make himself independent of them even for one day of the time,
will be regarded with disgust.

“Many silent ones you see, pleasing to you,
but their excess in wisdom or deficiency
will appear at the time of talking.

“The tongue of a man is one half, and the other half is his mind,
and here is nothing besides these two, except the shape
of the blood and the flesh.

“And verily, as to the folly of an old man
there is no wisdom after it,
but the young man after his folly may become wise.

We asked of you, and you gave,
and we returned to the asking and you returned to the giving,
and he who increases the asking, will one day be disappointed.”
Baha ad-Din Zuhayr [Abu al-Fadl Zuhayr ibn Muhammad al-Muhallabi] (1186 – 1258) Saudi Arabia
Source: The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume V, by Charles Francis Horne, Parke, Austin and Lipscomb, 1917

Another, more Anglicised, version of this poem is here.

This poem begins, as do most Arab poems, with love longings, but soon drifts into praise of two peacemakers and the story of the feud between two tribes which preceded the peace. From this field the poem soon wanders to the philosophic maxims of the author. Zuhayr is above all a philosopher.
  1. He fancies he sees the women again whom he saw twenty years previously, and he appeals to his companion to know if what he sees is real.
  2. There are many enemies and many friends dwelling there.
  3. This refers to the temple at Mecca which was built by Ismail, son of Abraham, ancestor of the tribe of Quraish, who married a woman of Jurhum, an old tribe of Yaman, who were the keepers of the temple before Quraish.
  4. The theme changes here abruptly, to praise of two peacemakers.
  5. Some Arabs, making a league to be revenged against their enemies, took oath with their hands plunged in a certain perfume, made by Manshim, as a sign of their coalition. They fought until they were slain to the last of them. Hence the proverb, " More unlucky than the perfume of Manshim."
  6. The misfortunes arising from war are double.
  7. Husain Bin Zamzam's father was killed during the war between the Benl Zubyfin and the Ben! 'Abs. When peace was concluded between the tribes, he made a vow secretly that he would kill one of the tribe of 'Abs out of the revenge for his father. This he did, but when the Benl 'Abs came to take revenge on him, Harith Ibn 'Awf offered them one hundred camels as blood money or his own son to kill. The 'Absioms took the camels and spared his son. The poet is now praising them for their act.
  8. He killed no one while the peace was in force except the one person on whom he meant to take revenge.
  9. By the deep pool is meant war, and the meaning of the lines is that the tribes refrained from war for a certain time, after which they again had recourse to arms.
  10. A common term of imprecation.
  11. The wandering desert Arabs when they met used to present the butt ends of their spears toward one another if their intentions were peaceful, the points if they intended fighting.

Tuesday 10 February 2015

Scarlet light of sunset - Sergei Esenin

Scarlet light of sunset shows up on the lake.
Grouse are crying in the wood, awake.

Monday 9 February 2015

Psalm 9 - Mahmoud Darwish

O rose beyond the reach of time and of the senses
O kiss enveloped in the scarves of all the winds
surprise me with one dream

Sunday 8 February 2015

The Sheep Keeper (poem II) - Fernando Pessoa

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and left
And sometimes looking behind me,

Saturday 7 February 2015

Friday 6 February 2015

Locusts - Femi Osofisan

Hurry, they say –
the afternoon is all a-clamour

Thursday 5 February 2015

I appear on balconies - Abou Chamakma

I appear on balconies and out of domes
and my veil encumbers nobody
for my home is space

Tuesday 3 February 2015

Symbu - Saah N´Tow

When the tunnel's light is growing dim
And the darkness around still lingers on
When all it seems, is too much to bear
Do not despair, because Symbu dear
I'll be there for you

Sunday 1 February 2015

A Morning Prayer - Gregory of Nazianzus

    'Tis dawn: to God I lift my hand,
To regulate my way;
    My passions rule, and unmoved stand,
And give to Thee the day:

Saturday 31 January 2015

Friday 30 January 2015

Like Red-Hot Lava - Maria Clara Sharupi Jua

The sun travelled from the East1
on its wings of wind
the seeds sprout
becoming words
to light up this day
my beloved

Thursday 29 January 2015

The Anvil and the Hammer - Kofi Awoonor

Caught between the anvil and the hammer
In the forging house of a new life,
Transforming the pangs that delivered me
Into the joy of new songs

Wednesday 28 January 2015

A Shout of Joy - Carl Spitteler

Oh what has changed my thought's defiant tread
To wing`ed ride on drifting clouds o'erhead?

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Three Wonders of the World - Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj

Everything is full of light; all of nature enjoying the sun is truly a wonder
Breathing, to all creatures the blessing of air is truly a wonder
Plants and animals, the nourishing water is truly a wonder
    Golden sunbeams spreading sparkling light into millions of places
    Animals, humans, plants enjoying the first warmth
    It is full of boldness and great energy

Monday 26 January 2015

Second causes only operate - Jalal al-Din Rumi

Second causes only operate in subordination to,
and form the impulsion of, the First Cause.
Air, earth, water, and fire are God's servants.
To us they seem lifeless, but to God living.

Sunday 25 January 2015

Rain grace upon us - Carol Penner

On our dry journey,
forgiveness is the water on the horizon,
and we’re the pilgrims in the desert
who cannot possibly walk there.

Saturday 24 January 2015

An Old Man - C.P. Cavafy

At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.

Wednesday 21 January 2015

The Night Cometh - Annie Louisa Walker

Work! for the night is coming;
  Work! through the morning hours;
Work! while the dew is sparkling;
  Work! 'mid the springing flowers;
Work! while the day grows brighter,
  Under the glowing sun;
Work! for the night is coming,—
  Night, when man's work is done.

Monday 19 January 2015

Gita Govinda 4th song - Jayadeva

With sandal smeared the bluish body,
garlanded, with yellow clothes.
With jewelled earrings on the cheeks,
to and fro the smiling roves.
Carelessly the women play.

Sunday 18 January 2015

Rapture Divine - Jacopone da Todi

When the mind's very being is gone,
Sunk in a conscious sleep,

Saturday 17 January 2015

The Forest Of Ardennes - Petrarch

Amid the wildwood's lone and difficult ways,
Where travel at great risk e'en men in arms,
I pass secure, — for only me alarms
That sun which darts of living love the rays,

Friday 16 January 2015

A bird inside the Cage - Sarojini Pattayat

I was there,
A bird inside the cage;
You came,
Sat on my cage,

Thursday 15 January 2015

There is a motionless tree - Octavio Paz

There is a motionless tree
there is another that moves forward
                a river of trees
pounds at my chest
                The green swell
of good fortune

Monday 12 January 2015

The Butterfly - Dimana Ivanova

She is tender
and fragile
as a vase of Czech porcelain

Sunday 11 January 2015

Morning - Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

As at morn's golden ray
Flee the shadows of night,
Thou true Light of the day,
Shades of ill chase away,
Give Thy people Thy light.

Saturday 10 January 2015

Cholla lass - Yi Yong-ak

You grew up kissing soft clams with colourful shells,
your eyes are blue as the sea, your face lightly tanned,
little lass.

Friday 9 January 2015

Thursday 8 January 2015

To my Daughter - Joseph Brodsky

Give me another life, and I'll be singing
in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting
there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,
in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Old Woman Brewing - Dorian Haarhoff

in war days she moved
as heady matriarch
on powder plains,

Tuesday 6 January 2015

Eventide - Nicolae Sirius

The birds, oh the birds!
In my soul they take wing

Sunday 4 January 2015

Sun is laughing - Grace Nichols

Sun is laughing
This morning she got up
On the happy side of the bed,

Saturday 3 January 2015

Ghazal - Bidel Dehlavi

Your hair shines from the sun's shadow.
Your musk lines break in the sun's letters.

Friday 2 January 2015

You work for me - Raya Wambui

You work for me.
And I’m tired of seeing, my country men bleeding
for the sake of your fees.

Thursday 1 January 2015

On the New Year - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fate now allows us,
'Twixt the departing
And the upstarting,
Happy to be;
And at the call of
Memory cherish'd,
Future and perish'd
Moments we see.