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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Diwan IV:16 - Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi

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

The wish - Anacreon

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

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.

A Vignette - Carl Spitteler

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

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

Given in Farewell - Du Mu

So slender, so supple,
      little more than thirteen,

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!

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:

Autumn Love - Li Ching Chao

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

My homeland - Ibrahim Tukan

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

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!

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;

Red flowers - Elena Bono

Red flowers
they grow high
up the mountain.

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.

Woods - Liu Qiyu

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

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;

Rouge in appearance - Samuel Hanagid

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

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

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.