Venice masks

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: