Poem For A Librarian - Mani Rao

Big library in our small town.
So many floors and wings,
We had three elevators and five stairwells.

A Disturbed Silence - Amha Asfaw

I lost my poems, my praise, my songs.
I lost my anger, my sorrow, my bitterness.

Nothing - Julia de Burgos

Since life is nothing in your philosophy,
let’s drink to the fact of not being our bodies.
Let's drink to the nothing of your sensual lips,
which are sensual zeros in your blue kisses:

The Cottage - Taras Shevchenko

Perhaps my mother prayerless trod
Nor knelt on my behalf to God,
But brought me up to what I am
As naturally as a lamb,

Pencil Letter - Irina Ratushinskaya

I know it won't be received
Or sent. The page will be
In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.

I live with my Lord - Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba

In the name of Allah the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Thanks to the Quran, I live with my Lord, the Incomparable Auxiliary, I gained full control of my soul and expelled Satan, the outcast.

To Ulla - Carl Michael Bellman

Ulla, mine Ulla, tell me, may I hand thee
Reddest of strawberries in milk or wine?
Or from the pond a lively fish? Command me!

After life comes death - Dada Masiti

After life comes death
When the Shaikh dies, no one should weep
Write “in the name of God,”
For everything begins that way

Daughter of Locusts - Ribka Sibhatu

Locusts, darkened sky,
flayed earth. A mother
panting in bed.

Like Elephants - Gaamangwe Mogami

Before the sad years made homes in our bones,
And our blood turned into riots,
We hang our swelling breasts in the branches of mamma’s¹ morala tree,
And we sang old gospels to the humans sleeping thick in our ribs,
Yet to be born.