The Difference Between You and Me - Hussein Habasch

The difference between you and me
Is that you sit cross-legged,
Leisurely savoring your glass of wine
While I wrap myself around myself
As I gulp from the glass of pain at the hospital.
You post the photo of your ninety something mother on Facebook,
Still in her prime.
And I remember the complexions of my seventy something
Mother with all her wrinkles.
You see her every day and place a peck on her cheeks,
Whereas I have seen her only twice in twenty-two years.
I kiss her photo every day in longing.
God bless our mothers!

Rublev - Rowan Williams

One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.

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