Year’s End - Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

Octaves - Osip Mandelstam

I love the formation of tissue
When after two, after three,
Or after four attempts at inhaling
I draw an unbroken breath.

Meditation on Ginkgo Nuts Left by My Father - Lee Gil-Won

When it reached the sea,
The river quieted for the first time,
After sending up clouds of spray, shaking the rocks,
And stirring up muddy water from time to time.

Of Beauty and Duty - Dante Alighieri

Two ladies to the summit of my mind
Have clomb, to hold an argument of love.

Apple-Pears - Andy Quan

each ninth month of the year
the buds fallen & fruit forming
copper-gold jewels a child’s round cheeks

A Christmas Prayer - George Macdonald

Loving looks the large-eyed cow,
Loving stares the long-eared ass
At Heaven's glory in the grass!

I approach, and I withdraw - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

I approach, and I withdraw:
who but I could find
absence in the eyes,
presence in what's far?

from “Octonaires on the World’s Vanity and Inconstancy” - Antoine de Chandieu

Ice glitters like it’s good.
The whole world glitters,
sped towards ends,
we all fall in.

Mistletoe - Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

O my Lord - Rabi’a of Basri

O my Lord,
the stars glitter

Poems from The Tale of Genji (chapter 44) - Murasaki Shikibu

Ah, cherry blossoms! How one's heart tremhles for them when stormy winds hlow
           although anyone can see they themselves care not at all.

De Spectaculis.XXX (While a roused hind was flying) - Marcus Valerius Martialis

While a roused hind was flying
    from the swift Molossian hounds,
and tangled the drawn-out chase by divers wiles,
    before Caesar's feet,

Was I lost in thoughts of love - Ono no Komachi

Was I lost in thoughts of love

Archimedes - Friedrich von Schiller

To Archimedes once a scholar came,
"Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;—

Publishers - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

And then they pretend like owls
With marble eyes and wizened stupidity
I do not know why they cannot perceive
True art

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 282-343) - Joost van den Vondel

Gabriel:
So be ye faithful, ever rendering thus
Both God and man your service: since mankind
So well belovèd are by God Himself.

Via del Monte - Umberto Saba

In Trieste, where there are many sorrows,
and beauties of sky and cityscape,
there’s a hill called the Via del Monte.

Let us go where there are varied crafts - Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Let us go where there are varied crafts
And trades -- shashlik and chebureki,
Where trousers on a sign give us
The idea of a man.

When I was born - Karaikkal Ammaiyar

When I was born and learned to speak
I was overcome with love

I Will Walk - Anon (Chippewa Indian)

I will walk into somebody's dwelling,
Into somebody's dwelling will I walk.

The Desert of Atacama VI - Raúl Zurita

Arid plains do not dream
             No one has ever managed to see
             Those chimerical pampas

Retirement - William Cowper

Fresh fields and woods! the Earth's fair face,
God's foot-stool, and man's dwelling-place.

Of the Father's Love Begotten - Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore.

To the Tune of To Rouge the Lips - Li Ching Chao

Lonely in my secluded chamber,

A thousand sorrows fill every inch
            of my sensitive being.

The Oracle - Walter von der Vogelweide

Beset with doubts, in agony
I sat quite long alone and thought
How from her service I might be free,
Until a comfort gladness brought.

Parting at evening - Richard Outram

The lake is borrowed light,
    Its darkening waters
Lengthen into night;

February 14th - Saw Wai

Arensberg said:
Only once you have experienced deep pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it heartbreak.

Winter song - Nichita Stãnescu

You are so beautiful in winter!
The field stretched on its back, near the horizon,
and the trees stopped running from the winter wind ...

The Daft-Days - Robert Fergusson

Now mirk December’s dowie face
Glowrs owr the rigs wi sour grimace,
While, thro’ his minimum of space,
              The bleer-ey’d sun,
Wi blinkin light and stealing pace,
              His race doth run.

The way is hard - Lina Sandell

The way is hard, narrow the gate.
But still it stands ajar,
So enter now, before too late,
There's room, whoe'er you are.

Winter Noon - Umberto Saba

At that moment when I was still happy
(God forgive that vast and terrible
word) what almost changed my joy

Silence - Giuseppe Ungaretti

I know a city
that each day fills with sun
and all is enraptured at that instant

Autumn - Adam Zagajewski

Autumn is always too early.
The peonies are still blooming, bees
are still working out ideal states,
and the cold bayonets of autumn
suddenly glint in the fields and the wind
rages.

Lamb of God - Nikolaus Decius

Lamb of God, innocent
Slaughtered upon the Tree,

XXII - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

Tico, tico, ticoti, tico, tico, ticoti

In the place of tears I the singer watch my flowers; they are in my hand; they intoxicate my soul and my song, as I walk alone with them, with my sad soul among them.

I will walk through the rye - Elmer Diktonius

I will walk through the rye
that sways in the wind
with lead-heavy ears

Your Way - Our Way - The Truth - Zelda Quakawoot

Your way
Tradition is replaced by authority
Respect is replaced by greed
What is happening to this nation,
Is the planting of an evil seed.

Self-Portrait: Moon and Mind - Tina Escaja

I hold the cerebral cortex.
Electrical sequences naming me
generate my
presence,

Patong - Abhay K

A promenade of rainbows
ensconced by emerald hills
sand silver white
fine as flour
sirens emerging from the Andaman Sea
as Botticelli's Venus.

The servant - Mimi Khalvati

Ma’mad, hurry, water the rose.
Blessed is the English one that grows
                      out in the rain.

Epistle - Marguerite de Navarre

If God gave me the Christ as lord.
Must I another wait upon?
If bread of life is my reward,
Must I the bread of death feed on?

Stop The Violence - Anonymous

Drugs all over under the ground.
Guns, people crying, putting each other down.

Common Night - Merdan Ehet'éli

This is a night made from words.
This is a night poured into our spines like pig iron.
This is a night that puts us up in slippers and in our bedrooms inside books.
This is a night that makes our noses shed hellfruit leaves.

Poems from The Tale of Genji (chapters 1 and 2) - Murasaki Shikibu

“We vowed that we would go together
down the road we all must go. You must not leave me behind.”
“I leave you, to go the road we all must go.
The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other.”

Woman’s Love and Life: I - Adalbert von Chamisso

Aa, since I have seen him,
I believe I’m blind.

The Wreck of the "Julie Plante" (A Legend of Lac St. Pierre) - William Henry Drummond

On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
    De win' she blow, blow, blow,
An' de crew of de wood scow "Julie Plante"
    Got scar't an' run below—
For de win' she blow lak hurricane,
    Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow bus' up on Lac St. Pierre
    Wan arpent from de shore.

A Love Song from the North - Sarojini Naidu

Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,
Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha,
Dreams of delight that are gone,
When swift to my side came the feet of my lover
With stars of the dusk and the dawn?

Gone with the wind - Marguerite de Navarre

If men offend you in some wise,
Bear the affront light-heartedly;
And, if with calumny and lies,
Let not our thoughts unceasing be.
     Much empty blathering
Prevails; and so, say what they may:
Gone with the wind are such as they.

Change - Raymond Knister

I shall not wonder more, then,
But I shall know.

Another Waking - Carl Spitteler

From the nightmare world of dream
I awakened with a scream.

A song about a friend - Vladimir Vysotsky

If your friend just became a man,
Not a friend, not a foe, - just so,
If you really can't tell from the start,
If he's strong in his heart, -
To the peaks take this man - don't fret!

The Crabs - Brian Vrepont

The crabs are lunching;
An hour I’ve watched, and still they eat,
Pincering microcosms from the scaly rocks,
Time to split-second mouth shutterings
Link Chinamen with chop-sticks;
No disrespect, but Asian they look,
And I on an overleaning rock am humbled.

The lost one - Meng Haoran

The red gleam o'er the mountains
    Goes wavering from sight,
And the quiet moon enhances
    The loveliness of night.

After Trying Many Years - Michelangelo Buonarroti

After trying many years, and then
near death, the able man may know
an image living in the alpine stone.

The Beginning - Mark O'Connor

God himself
having that day planted a garden
walked through it at evening and knew
that Eden was not nearly complex enough.

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.

The Drover’s Song - Patrick Durack

Cheerily sings the drover
With his stock so fat and sleek
Up to the border and over
His fortune for to seek.

The tale of the light roan cow - Mary Durack

Have you heard the tale of the light roan cow
With the minus off-side ear
That Paddy found, On neighbouring ground
While mustering far and near?

A Box of Clouds - Sonia Phillips

To teach is
To make wings for ideas,
Watching with joy as fearful cocoons break

Sold - Anne E Thompson

I held you,
Your weight light on my hip
As I touched your button nose
With mine,
Peered deep into
Shining eyes,
Because you are my world.

How Heavy The Days - Hermann Hesse

How heavy the days are.
There's not a fire that can warm me,
Not a sun to laugh with me,
Everything bare,

When I shall come to you - Cathal O’Byrne

Of the dim woods, inlaid
With the jasper and jade
Of the green light that falls
Through the aisles, o'er the walls
Of the dark leafy fane,

Making Peace - Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."

Enough - Otto Julius Bierbaum

A Knight rode through the ripened grain,
No spurs he had and loose his rein.
The horse that feasted on his walk
Snatched many a ripe and yellow stalk.

Epistle to Daedalus - Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão

Why you gave to your son plumage wax wings
if the powerfull sun at the sky would undo them?

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 223-281) - Joost van den Vondel

Belzebub:
Great is man's might, that thus even ours out-grows!

Distant Yet Never So Close - Blanca Varela

distant yet never so close
we walk a sinking earth
lying down on her or simply standing
we feel the bucking of time

The Fair Agnete - Agnes Miegel

When Sir Ulrich’s widow in church knelt to pray,
From the church yard toward her floated a lay.
The organ on high did cease to sound,
The priests and the boys all stood spellbound;

The Banana Plant - Euphrase Kezilahabi

The banana plant lies on the ground, no longer of use,
having been cut down, reluctantly, by the workers in the garden.
Children, anxiously, wait till time's up.
There's nothing in the garden,
other than a sorrowful wind
that makes the grass shiver and moan.

My Inner Zone: The half moon over Mojacar - Susanne Jorn

A POMEGRANATE
A SMALL TORTOISESHELL
A POMEGRANATE

*

Most wonderfully lovely pomegranate tree.
Most wonderfully beautiful pomegranate.
Love’s pomegranate-red fruit.

Nothing more.

Waiting for the Marines - Fadel K Jabr

Twelve years have passed
And the Iraqis are turning over
Like skewered fish
On the fire of waiting.

Get Drunk - Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid Fardel

All My Life - Regina Derieva

All my life
I sought
an angel.

The Old Gray Wall - Bliss Carman

Time out of mind I have stood
Fronting the frost and the sun,
That the dream of the world might endure,
And the goodly will be done.

This sky of lost miles - Ranjit Hoskote

Shield your eyes from this oblong patch of light
where the towers once stood, where now there floods
on our TV screens this sky of lost miles, miles yet to be
– now never to be – redeemed, this sky that showers
a rain of ash and scorched maple leaves,

Grandmother Moon - Ribka Sibhatu

Like once upon a time
here comes grandmother moon
through the window
full of tales and memories.

Thread in a Spider’s Web - Coral Bracho

A little stream, drawn by the magnets of air and light,
and flowing like time, like copper forming,
is the thread

Pretty Halcyon Days - Ogden Nash

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!

Barely Disfigured - Paul Éluard

Adieu Tristesse
Bonjour Tristesse
Farewell Sadness
Hello Sadness

I Go Walking into a Spring-Tree - Kim Su-Bok

Constantly inclined to start talking to anyone,
sitting idly in a room with the light out,

stones - Sjón

i’ve been hit on the head by a stone – my ex-wife has been hit on the head
by a stone in my presence – my old school friend has been hit on the head

The Ship, Solid and Black - Juan Ramón Jimenez

The ship, solid and black,
enters the clear blackness
of the great harbour.

Nocturne III - José Asunción Silva

          A night
A night full of hushings, of the curled wool of perfume
     And incanting wing,

You who want - Hadewijch

You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within.

To a Nose - Francisco de Quevedo

There was a man
              stuck
                  to a nose,

On feeing his city - Samuel Hanagid

And this in his youth on leaving Cordoba:

Spirit splits in its asking,

and soul in its wanting is balked;

The Sorrow of Love - William Butler Yeats

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

For Tina - Inua Ellams

The day I discovered how she survived the civil war,
how she saw her friends pass like minutes into oblivion,
how she screamed through drop zones and Morse codes
into jungle, dodging bullets, hiding and crying into rain,

The mouths of streets - Anna Kamienska

The mouths of streets are silent, windows go blind,
Cold veins of tracks tremble noiselessly.
In the mirror of wet pavement the sky hangs
With lead clouds full of hail.

Beauty in woman; the high will's decree - Dante Alighieri

He compares all Things with his Lady, and finds them wanting

Beauty in woman; the high will's decree;
Fair knighthood armed for manly exercise;

The Falcon - Der von Kürenberg

I raised a noble falcon
For more than a year;

Childhood faith - Einar Westling

Do you still believe in heart,
Nor from childhood faith depart?
Can you pray as in the days of long ago:
"Lord, who loves the children all,
Keep me, guard me, though I'm small"?
Aged mother will rejoice with heart aglow!

Journey and a half - Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya

Have you ever been ordered to strip
In front of a thousand shouting eyes
Forced to lie on your back
With your feet astride

The Fairy Well of Slemish - Cathal O’Byrne

Twas the grey of the evening when Shaun came over
The mountain's shoulder by Torloch's Tower,
Like clustered pearls lay the dew on the clover,
One pale star burned thro' that dew-grey hour.

It is war! It is war! - Matthias Claudius

It is war! It is war! O God’s angel, keep it away
and intervene to stop it!
Sadly, it is war—and I do not want it to be my fault!

SETI - Boghos L. Artinian

Rest in peace, Carl Sagan!
Contact was not imminent when you died,

Lonesome Night - Hermann Hesse

You brothers, who are mine,
Poor people, near and far,
Longing for every star,

The Kiss Across the Ocean - Tomaž Šalamun

O little bird, how tired I am!
Do you want to see everything that I have written today?
New I have an entire factory
and little men dressed in little sackcloths.

To the soul - Yehudah Halevi

Oh, you that sleep in the bosom of childhood,
how long will you rest there?
Know that youth is shaken off like straw!

Schrödinger’s Cat - Ahmad Ebrahimi

Is it the observer
who brings the world into existence

The night’s deep violoncello - Karin Boye

The night’s deep violoncello
hurls its dark rejoicing out across the expanses.

In the night - Joaquín Arcadio Pagaza

It seems like noon, so bright the lustre shed
On the damp forest by the moon's white glow.
The breeze scarce moves yon oak tree to and fro,
That mid a thousand others rears its head.

The advent of Indra (The Hunter and the Hero - Book VIII) - Bhāravi

Arjun, mighty in his strength,
All impure passions overcame;
And to his holy hermitage,
Rejoiced at heart, great Indra came.
He came disguised, — as come the gods, —
Even like an ancient anchorite,
Wearied by a tiresome journey,
Weak in limbs and weak in sight.

Everything must end - Fujiwara no Ietaka

Everything must end.
Thus the day tries to begin
with the morning bell.

Fortunio’s song - Alfred de Musset

If you think I'm going to say
Whom I dare to love,
I cannot, not even for an empire,
Name her for you.

The little yellow road - Seosamh mac Cathmhaoil

I am sick, sick,
No part of me sound;
The heart in my middle
Dies of its wound,
Pining the time
When she did stand
With me shoulder to shoulder
And hand in hand.

The Guitar - Federico Garcia Lorca

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

Diwan IV:17 - Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi

Did heaven’s gates open into the universe
or did earth touch the celestial lights,

Or did the brilliance of the face of a certain notable
shame the luminaries,

Confession of a Stolen Kiss - Charles d'Orleans

My ghostly fader, I me confess,
First to God and then to you,
That at a window, wot ye how,
I stale a kosse of gret swetness,

From: Beasts of Nalunga - Jack Mapanje

Now That September 11 Should Define Mr Western Civilisation ...
(for Sarah Maguire & Saadi Yousef)

I remember being summoned to the British Council Office
Once, back home; I’d got the Commonwealth Scholarship

Gas - Natalia Smirnova

look, we intend to croak. but we will just
live on. and on and on and on

The Hour of the Children - José Emilio Pacheco

The children traffic in a new species of rats,
Ringed like lobsters and colored magenta and sky blue.
Strange flavor at first
But since hunger doesn’t lie
We grow used to baking them.

The Poems: XXXVI - Hafez

"Thy mouth and thy lip", I asked her, "Me blest when will they make? "
 " Thy bidding in all", she answered, "Shift to fulfil they make. "

Earth's embroidery - Solomon ibn Gabirol

With the ink of its showers and rains,
with the quill of its lightning,

Thanks, my God - August L. Storm

Thanks, my God, for all that has been.
Thanks for all You do bestow,
Thanks for all the years that have been,
Thanks for minutes, as they flow.
Thanks for spring days, warm with sunshine,
Thanks for fall days, dark and drear,
Thanks for tears, forgotten oft time,
Thanks for peace, my heart to cheer.

I Emerged from the War Inadvertently - Adnan Al-Sayegh

I am emerging from the age of betrayals
Toward noble weeping for a verdant dream
Sown by pigs and vermin
I am entering the orbit of the poem
Half free and half chained.
It is for you to lament me, with your hired mourners
I need do nothing but point
With Na’ilah’s severed fingers,
Toward the country’s cloak, saluted by gunshots,
And draped upon tribal spears.
The bloody Euphrates will seep
Through your fingers
When you write
“All that the poets write is in vain.”

Walls - C.P. Cavafy

Thoughtless, pitiless, indecent,
they put up high, thick walls around me.

The Lattice Gate - Bertel Gripenberg

You call a sonnet poets’ vain self-esteem,
That mingles emptiness with glittered rhyming,
But locks life within narrow walls, confining,
Extinguishes the hearth-flames of the dream.

Cuauhtemoc - Luisa Igloria

The young sailor
shows us around the visiting
ship, its instruments for calculating
moisture in the air; the numbered masts,

In a search for a soul - Ana Zgonjanin

Your gardens are hidden beyond the eclipse,
There worlds lie behind the clouds,
Springs, summers in one and the same,
Kiss by coldness of a hell,
The autumns and winters that follow them,
The imperfections that you hide.

Hide not your face - Lina Sandell

Hide not your face from me, Lord, let me now see,
Comfort me, bless me, and when I call hear me!
You are my faithful, compassionate Redeemer,
Aren't you coming soon, aren't you coming soon?

The tooth - Robert Minhinnick

(Amiriya, Baghdad)
In your head I whisper:
A tooth, blue as a cinder
And I ask: Coward,
Whose pain is it anyway?
Your cells are a blizzard,
Your mind a ragbook, yet
I dream you into growth
Luscious as papaya flesh
Around my black seed.

Beirut, August 1982 - Ghassan Zaqtan

How I wish he had not died
in last Wednesday’s raid
as he strolled through Nazlat al-Bir –
my friend with blond hair,
as blond as a native of the wetlands of Iraq.

In praise of May - Finn MacCool

May-day! delightful day!
Bright colours play the vale along.
Now wakes at morning's slender ray
Wild and gay the blackbird's song.

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 192-222) - Joost van den Vondel

Belzebub:
It seems that passion for
This feminine creature hath thy heart inflamed.

Lili Marlene - Hans Leip

Underneath the lantern
By the barrack gate,
Darling, I remember
The way you used to wait.
’Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me;
You’d always be
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene.

The white sail - Jill Jones

The city flows
as the ocean gives
its tides. Each day
and evening they move
through streets.

“I Am Not I” - Juan Ramón Jimenez

I am not I.
                   I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,

Border Song III - Lu Lun

A moonless sky, wild geese flown out of sight;
The Hun beaten, their prince by night takes flight.

Sleep Peacefully - Alfonsina Storni

You said the word that enamours
My hearing. You already forgot. Good.
Sleep peacefully. Your face should
Be serene and beautiful at all hours.

Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City - Durs Grünbein

Why moan about it, Johnny-come-lately? My friend,
When you were born your city was long gone.
Misty eyes don't turn hair grey and you,
Your name: too quick for it, too green.
Seventeen years, a childhood hardly, were plenty
To erase the past. They sealed the wounds all up
In strict and sombre grey; enchantment ceded to bureaucracy.
The Saxon peacock wasn't slaughtered out of need—
Lichens, inexorable, bloomed on sandstone flowers.
They come back like hiccups, elegies: why brood, why bother?

Other barbarians will come along - Mahmoud Darwish

Other barbarians will come along.
The emperor’s wife will be abducted.
Drums will roll.

Stain - Gülten Akin

Here we stand at the messiest point of our time

someone should write us, if we don’t
who will

God speaks to the Soul - Mechthild of Magdeburg

And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected

Mankokosane - Hale Tsehlana

Mankokosane¹, pula e ea na
re tla hola neng? ha tsatsi le chaba²

Impressions of a traveller - Kao-Shih

In a silent, desolate spot,
In the night stone-frozen and clear,
The wanderefs hand on the sail
Is gripped by the fingers of fear.

Chante-clair - Rabbe Enckell

High in November day flames your golden trumpet.
o herald, many times before now
your sentinel’s cry has summoned men

27 • metaphor - Chen Yuhong

you suspect love is
a voracious one-armed bandit

Stony Grey Soil - Patrick Kavanagh

O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.

How Was School? - Lindsay MacRae

Mum can’t see why it’s uncool
To ask me cheerfully
‘How was school?’

Come To Me, O Christ - Paramahansa Yogananda

O Christ—Thou rarest flower of hearts—Thou didst sail on the storm-tossed lake of prejudiced minds. Its evil-scented, gloomy thought-waves lashed Thy lily-tender soul. They crucified Thee with their evil. Yet Thou didst shed the aroma of goodness and forgiveness, and didst help them to be purified by remorse, so helping them to become attractively sweet-scented with Thine all-loving Flower-Soul.

The road nonpareil - Nicolae Sirius

The only road I knew without fail was your heart.
I knew it better than the dream in the hymn
Praising spring. Better than homesickness
And despondence, or the wind recapping the psalms
Of movement through fragrant valleys
Joined to restless water-courses.

This country nurtured hope - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

This country nurtured hope decayed,
The politician cruises on a 4WD guzzler,
The thief.
Feeling the base of his belly.

Phaedra, Act V Scene 6 (lines 11-83) - Jean Racine

Scarcely had we emerged from Troezen’s gate:
He drove his chariot, and his soldiery
Were ranged about him, mute and grave as he.
Brooding, he headed toward Mycenae. Lax
In his hands, the reins lay on his horses' backs.
His haughty chargers, quick once to obey
His voice, and give their noble spirits play,
Now, with hung head and mournful eye, seemed part
Of the sad thoughts that filled their master's heart.

Elegy in stone - Marcelo Ensema Nsang

I speak to you of my destiny when I die,
one afternoon, beside the virgin fountain,
at the edge
of my final memory.

Clara d'Ellébeuse - Francis Jammes

Down the years it’s Clara d’Ellébeuse
I love, who went to old-time boarding schools
and came, warm evenings, under linden trees
to read her magazines of other days.

The Ant Explorer - Clarence James Dennis

Once a little sugar ant made up his mind to roam —
To fare away far away, far away from home.

Pentecost - Annette Freün von Droste-Hülshoff

The day was still, the sun's bright glare
Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall
Withered by tropic heat, the air
Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall.
Behold a group, young men and gray,
And women, kneeling; silence holds them all;
They mutely pray!

The City - Eeva-Liisa Manner

How the houses have grown in this city,
the chasms deepened, the water become blacker,

Silken shoes - Jens Peter Jacobsen

Silken shoes upon golden lasts!
I’ve won a maiden fair!
The fairest maiden waits for me!

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 51-95) - Joost van den Vondel

Apollion:
I'll pass my journey thither by nor tell
How downward sweeping through nine spheres I sped.
That swift as arrows round their centre whirl.

I Loved You - Aleksandr Pushkin

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still,
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet
It burns so quietly within my soul,
No longer should you feel distressed by it.

XIV - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

Only the tzinitzcan is in power, the tzinitzcan arouses me in my affliction, letting fall its songs like sad flowers.

A Silent Mouth - Cathal O’Byrne

O little green leaf on the bough, you hear
       the lark in the morn,
You hear the grey feet of the wind stir in
       the shimmering corn,
You hear low down in the grass
‘The singing Shee as they pass;
Do you ever hear, O little green flame! -
My loved one calling, calling, whispering
       my name?

We remember him - Anonymous

When we are weary and in need of strength,
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember him.

Voices are heard - Rafael Felipe Oteriño

Like rolling rings,
or drops of honey, or mirrors,
or teeth unearthed
by raging water
they've begun to rise.

Far Within Us #1 - Vasko Popa

We raise our arms
The street climbs into the sky
We lower our eyes
The roofs go down into the earth

Pigtail - Tadeusz Różewicz

When all the women in the transport

had their heads shaved

four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs

swept up

and gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass

the stiff hair lies

of those suffocated in gas chambers

there are pins and side combs

in this hair

The hair is not shot through with light

is not parted by the breeze

is not touched by any hand

or rain or lips

In huge chests

clouds of dry hair

of those suffocated

and a faded plait

a pigtail with a ribbon

pulled at school

by naughty boys.

---

Tadeusz Różewicz (1921 - 2014) Poland

Translated by Adam Czerniawski

Source: POETRY PAGE OF PGR

A Damascene Moon - Nizar Qabbani

Green Tunisia, I have come to you as a lover
On my brow, a rose and a book
For I am the Damascene whose profession is passion

Sonnet LXXII. A Prayer for Aid - Michelangelo Buonarroti

Oh, make me see Thee, Lord, where'er I go!
      If mortal beauty sets my soul on fire,
      That flame when near to Thine must needs expire,
      And I with love of only Thee shall glow.

Lament I - Jan Kochanowski

Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:

For Tony Benn - Julian Dobson

It's not your pipe or plummy voice
nor your posh-boy turned working class
mutation that I celebrate.

Elysium - Friedrich von Schiller

Past the despairing wail
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!

Outside History - Eavan Boland

These are outsiders, always. These stars—
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before

To See Him Again - Gabriela Mistral

Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?

Sonnet XXX - Fernando Pessoa

I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,

Through Foulest Fogs - Bysshe Vanolis

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;

Stay - Ingeborg Bachmann

Now the journey is ending,
the wind is losing heart.
Into your hands it's falling,
a rickety house of cards.

France - Toru Dutt

Not dead,—oh no,—she cannot die!
Only a swoon, from loss of blood!
Levite England passes her by,
Help, Samaritan! None is nigh;
Who shall staunch me this sanguine flood?

The Story of the Royal Huntress - T. Ramakrishna

It was a land of plenty and of wealth;
There God's indulgent hand made for a race
Supremely blest a paradise on earth.
A land of virtue, truth, and charity,
Where nature's choicest treasures man enjoyed
With little toil, where youth respected age,
Where each his neighbour's wife his sister deemed,
Where side by side the tiger and the lamb
The water drank, and sported oft in mirth.
A land where each man deemed him highly blest
When he relieved the miseries of the poor,
When to his roof the wearied traveller came
To share his proffered bounty with good cheer.
Such was the far-famed land of Panchala.

Warrior's Longing - Alfred Lichtenstein

I would like to lie in my bed
In a white shirt,

A Ballad Of Sark - Algernon Charles Swinburne

High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant’s hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold
Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold
Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark
Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark
Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree.

House of the poor - Mzi Mahola

When I was a little boy
I never questioned why
A solitary path
Led from a poor man’s hut.

Deluge - Sándor Kányádi

The broken wings of lightning bolts are
lashing my window.
The deluge is knocking.
I'm listening.

I saw my country’s walls - Francisco de Quevedo

I saw my country’s walls.
If at one time
they were strong,
now they have
collapsed, exhausted
by the course
of the age.

A plain soing of the Mexicans - Nahuatl indian (anonymous)

I alone will clothe thee with flowers, mine alone is the song which casts down our grief before God in thy house.

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 27-49) - Joost van den Vondel

Apollion:
I have, Lord Belzebub,
The low terrene observed with keenest eye.
And now I offer thee the fruits grown there
So far below these heights, 'neath other skies

Moorish Ballad - José Zorilla

And there the Sultan stood,
And murmurs heard,
While watching jealously.

The Desert of Atacama V - Raúl Zurita

           Speak of the whistle of Atacama
           the wind erases like snow
           the colour of that plain

Passer-By These Are Words - Yves Bonnefoy

 Passer-by, these are words.
 But instead of reading
 I want you to listen: to this frail
 Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Eastern River - Peter Huchel

Do not look for the stones
in water above the mud,
the boat is gone.

Milestone - Bruce Levitan

So the time has come at last
In years and months, and days and hours:

Easter - Edmund Spenser

Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;

Theme (from Bell Songs) - Carl Spitteler

Bell with tongue of silver tone,
I would make thy secret known -
Cooped with screech-owl, flittermouse,

Good Friday - Edwin Morgan

Three o’clock. The bus lurches
round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –‘
he flops beside me – 'right along Bath Street?

Found - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I wandered lonely
Beneath the trees,
And sought for nothing,
But strolled at ease.

When Philosophies Sleep - Edasseri Govindan Nair

"Everything is fate"
That was father's faith;
He had nothing to do but wait.

Black roses - Ernst Josephson

Tell me, why are you so sad today?
You have always been so merry and gay!

You Have to Fear the Rose - Rafal Wojaczek

You have to fear the rose; it is the mouth
of the wound that bleeds continually inside you.

The Coronation - John O’Donohue

It was a long time ago in another land.
Who could tell how it really was before belief
Came towards you with a hunger that could not see you
Except against white air cleansed of the shadow of earth?

A path in the woods - Anna Kamienska

I don’t trust the truth of memories
because what leaves us
departs forever

Melody - Rabbe Enckell

A bird’s warble flies
like a swivel-bait cast over waves.

The Lover - Solveig von Schoultz

My eyes want to kiss your face.
I have no power over my eyes.

La Chanson du Mal-Aimé - Guillaume Apollinaire

To Paul Léautaud
I was singing this refrain
in nineteen three, not knowing my
love and phoenix were the same,
and if they fled the evening sky
they were reborn when morning came.

One night of London fog and flame
a ne'er do well resembling my
love was passing: up he came
and showed me such a knowing eye
it made me lower mine in shame.

Those Who Carry - Anna Kamienska

Those who carry pianos
to the tenth floor wardrobes and coffins

Prague: The Golden City - Michel Galiana

Songs of gold, songs of blood used to lull your children:
A captive with his lute overpowered a fortress,
A man ever fighting in spite of his blindness,
A prophet whose cause was pleaded by martyrdom.

Growth - Nora May French

I twine you, little trellis, close and fond,
       And swing in wistful threads above, beyond,
For air and space to bloom. Be it so.
Ah me!  I love you, but the plant must grow.

Miguel - Cesar Vallejo

I'm sitting here on the old patio
beside your absence. It is a black well.

Among us all - Charles Pierre Baudelaire

It is essential to be drunk all the time.
That’s all: there’s no other problem.

The Light Gatherer - Carol Ann Duffy

When you were small, your cupped palms
each held a candleworth under the skin, enough light to begin,
                                and as you grew,
light gathered in you, two clear raindrops
in your eyes,
                               warm pearls, shy,
in the lobes of your ears, even always
the light of a smile after your tears.

SINGER(TM) - Joumana-Jo Haddad

Could it be that the old sewing

machine

my mother gave me

would finally come in handy?

Grape Vine - Hale Tsehlana

I heard from the grapevine
that your mother is a witch.
they say this was not a natural death
This man was bewitched.

Winter song - Juan Ramón Jimenez

They sing. They sing.
Where do the birds sing, the birds that sing?

The Leaden Echo (from Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well) - Gerard Manley Hopkins

How to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?

The Violet - Ludvig Holstein

Sweet flower mine! My little bird!
I see you from my lonely shade.

Nicaea - Gerhard Fritsch

From the Council the Creed.
From the Emperors the wall.
From the Seljuks tiled mosques.

Three Professors - Ludwig Fulda

The first professor split a hair
And lectured as it withered there.

Albert And His Savings - Marriott Edgar

One day, little Albert Ramsbottom
To see 'ow much money 'e'd got
Stuck a knife in 'is money-box slot 'ole
And fiddled and fished out the lot.

The Storm - Anais Nin

In the country, the trees bend
Under the weight of the rain
That is falling in huge drops, under the name cheater,

Swimming Ool - Kenn Nesbitt

Swimming in the swimming pool
is where I like to “B,”

That pastry and coffee house in Como - Giampiero Neri

That pastry and coffee house in Como
the teenager actress, hope of our theatre,
had often patronized,

Christ Has No Body - St Teresa of Ávila

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,

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.

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,

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?"

The Garden of Death - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
white as bones

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.

The Place Where We Are Right - Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

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.

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.

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.

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;

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.

Summer Evening at Sirmione - George Gömöri

Already past the lovelier half of life
but on my way towards distant Ithaca,

Doing Nothing - Roderic Quinn

With the sorrow on me
Neighbours come and go —
Think me vain and foolish
Nursing up my woe.

The Wanderers - Robert Buchanan

God’s blessing on poor ship-folk! Peace and prayer
     Fall on their eyelids till they close in sleep!

A Zacinto - Ugo Foscolo

I'll never step ashore and feel your beach
the way I felt it as a barefoot child,

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.

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?

Scarlet light of sunset - Sergei Esenin

Scarlet light of sunset shows up on the lake.
Grouse are crying in the wood, awake.

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

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,

My Son - Fatoumata Sidibé

The moon keeps watch
and the child sleeps.

Locusts - Femi Osofisan

Hurry, they say –
the afternoon is all a-clamour

I appear on balconies - Abou Chamakma

I appear on balconies and out of domes
and my veil encumbers nobody
for my home is space

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

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:

Close to midnight - Srečko Kosovel

Close to midnight.
Flies dying in a glass.

Like Red-Hot Lava - Maria Clara Sharupi Jua

The sun travelled from the East¹
on its wings of wind
the seeds sprout
becoming words
to light up this day
my beloved

The Anvil and the Hammer - Kofi Awoonor

Caught between the anvil and the hammer
In the forging house of a new life,
Transforming the pangs that delivered me
Into the joy of new songs

A Shout of Joy - Carl Spitteler

Oh what has changed my thought's defiant tread
To wing`ed ride on drifting clouds o'erhead?

Three Wonders of the World - Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj

Everything is full of light; all of nature enjoying the sun is truly a wonder
Breathing, to all creatures the blessing of air is truly a wonder
Plants and animals, the nourishing water is truly a wonder
    Golden sunbeams spreading sparkling light into millions of places
    Animals, humans, plants enjoying the first warmth
    It is full of boldness and great energy

Second causes only operate - Jalal al-Din Rumi

Second causes only operate in subordination to,
and form the impulsion of, the First Cause.
Air, earth, water, and fire are God's servants.
To us they seem lifeless, but to God living.

Rain grace upon us - Carol Penner

On our dry journey,
forgiveness is the water on the horizon,
and we’re the pilgrims in the desert
who cannot possibly walk there.

An Old Man - C.P. Cavafy

At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.

The Night Cometh - Annie Louisa Walker

Work! for the night is coming;
  Work! through the morning hours;
Work! while the dew is sparkling;
  Work! 'mid the springing flowers;
Work! while the day grows brighter,
  Under the glowing sun;
Work! for the night is coming,—
  Night, when man's work is done.

Gita Govinda 4th song - Jayadeva

With sandal smeared the bluish body,
garlanded, with yellow clothes.
With jewelled earrings on the cheeks,
to and fro the smiling roves.
Carelessly the women play.

Rapture Divine - Jacopone da Todi

When the mind's very being is gone,
Sunk in a conscious sleep,

The Forest Of Ardennes - Petrarch

Amid the wildwood's lone and difficult ways,
Where travel at great risk e'en men in arms,
I pass secure, — for only me alarms
That sun which darts of living love the rays,

A bird inside the Cage - Sarojini Pattayat

I was there,
A bird inside the cage;
You came,
Sat on my cage,

There is a motionless tree - Octavio Paz

There is a motionless tree
there is another that moves forward
                a river of trees
pounds at my chest
                The green swell
of good fortune

The Butterfly - Dimana Ivanova

She is tender
and fragile
as a vase of Czech porcelain

Morning - Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

As at morn's golden ray
Flee the shadows of night,
Thou true Light of the day,
Shades of ill chase away,
Give Thy people Thy light.

Cholla lass - Yi Yong-ak

You grew up kissing soft clams with colourful shells,
your eyes are blue as the sea, your face lightly tanned,
little lass.

Shadows Roses Shadows - Ingeborg Bachmann

Under a strange sky
shadows roses
shadows

To my Daughter - Joseph Brodsky

Give me another life, and I'll be singing
in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting
there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,
in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

Old Woman Brewing - Dorian Haarhoff

in war days she moved
as heady matriarch
on powder plains,

Eventide - Nicolae Sirius

The birds, oh the birds!
In my soul they take wing

Sun is laughing - Grace Nichols

Sun is laughing
This morning she got up
On the happy side of the bed,

Ghazal - Bidel Dehlavi

Your hair shines from the sun's shadow.
Your musk lines break in the sun's letters.

You work for me - Raya Wambui

You work for me.
And I’m tired of seeing, my country men bleeding
for the sake of your fees.

On the New Year - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fate now allows us,
'Twixt the departing
And the upstarting,
Happy to be;
And at the call of
Memory cherish'd,
Future and perish'd
Moments we see.