Thank you, Lord, for all your goodness - August L. Storm

Thank you, Lord, for all your goodness

Through the years of yesterday;

Thank you, too, for present mercies

And your blessing on my way.

The Collapse of Power - Saw Wai

under this sha-manic sky

with its favourable spirits and forks of lightning

why do unknown numbers

dance into obscurity?

Armstrong! oh Armstrong!

are there multi-coloured cauldrons

in the centre of your iris?

how sublime your iris!

truly 

in this most totemic of pressure-cookers

there is: 

 no Thomas Edison

 no Kanaung prince

 no Thein Pe Myint

 no Jack London

 no Vincent Van Gogh

 no Paw Oo Thet

 no Saya Zawgyi

 no Rabindranath Tagore

 no John Lennon

 no Myoma Nyein

 no collegian Ne Win

 no Robert Redford

 no Harold Robbins

 no Ahtoutthaw Hla Aung

 no Thakhin Aung San

 no nothing is there

 no nothing 

 no 

 everything

look!

(in the cauldron of dreamtime)

how these bubbling mists

of a jungle imagination

are demented and embellished

by the red of

first light

---

Saw Wai [U Saw Wei] (20th century) Myanmar

Translated by Niall McDevitt.

Source: National Poetry Library (From The Wolf No 17 (Spring 2008))

Old Surrealist Ballad - José Lezama Lima

When the rivulet swells with lashing

snaketails and the piano with its backside turned

displays its shoes shining like the night

Duet - Trish Harris

I became an old woman

age eleven

The Chicken-seller - Han Dong

He's got the knack for killing chickens quick, so

He became a chicken-seller, that way

He doesn't need to kill people. Even though he acts

Calm and gentle, and never beats his wife

Whoever Comes From The Earth - Nelly Sachs

Whoever

comes from the Earth

reaching for the moon

or

other heavenly mineral flower –

will soar high

The Emigrant - Ndue Ukaj

He has only questions, his answers so very timid

In dirty pockets with concreted nostalgia.

He has only memories that surround his neck

Like the millstone they shake him one step forward and a few backward,

While caressing in torrential waterfall,

And kidnapping the time which he never sees.

I Have forgotten - Milarepa

May I be far removed from contending creeds and dogmas.

Ever since my Lord’s grace entered my mind,

My mind has never strayed to seek such distractions.

Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion,

I have forgotten all difference between myself and others.

Joe - Ana Célia da Silva

Down the street

there goes Joe,

sad and tired

My Mother - Franco Leoni

She was beautiful, my mother, just 23, that 29th September.

Her face was gentle, calm, my beautiful mother.