What are you doing, soul? - Petrarch

“What are you doing, soul? What do you think?
Will we have peace? A truce? Or always war?”—
"I do not know our future, but I see
our torment doesn't please her lovely eyes.”—

Point Cristina and Point Fernanda - Marcelo Ensema Nsang

Album of doves
that comes to coo
the sister couple
who sleep in the sea.

And You Never Forgot - Ali Podrimja

Here and there beyond barred windows
Chasing you people forgot themselves

An Elder’s Prayer - Bai T. Moore

Oh great Spirit of the forest,
I have nothing in my hand
But a chicken and some rice

Jesu, Dulcis Memoria - Bernard of Clairvaux

Jesu, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy Face to see,
And in Thy Presence rest.

Animal Crackers - Richard de Zoysa

“Draw me a lion.”
So I set my pen
to work. Produce a lazy, kindly beast . . .
Colour it yellow.

Skeete's Bay, Barbados - Robert Lee

One always missed the turning, but found, in time
The broken sign that pointed crookedly, loath to
Allow another stranger here. Perhaps this Tom

My Tabriz - Suleyman Rustam

I never get tired of looking at your beauty,
My Tabriz¹, my Tabriz, my gorgeous Tabriz!

Metempsychosis - Juan Ramón Molina

I was a fish in the mirrors of the sonorous ocean wide,
where I beheld the glimmer of gems and metals;
that is the reason why I love the foam, the sourly
rocky shores, the briny gales, and the vivid choral reefs.

After the Deluge - Ingmāra Balode

the first such spring after the deluge —
i do not see you squint once.

Emigrant - Corsino Fortes

Every evening, sunset crooks
             its thumb across the island
And from the sunset to the thumb
             there grows
             a path of dead stone

Not thou from us, O Lord, but we - Richard Chenevix Trench

Not Thou from us, O Lord, but we
Withdraw ourselves from Thee.

One eye crystal, one eye flame - Mimi Khalvati

One eye crystal, one eye flame, it arrives
by stealth. Carrying tatters in its jaw,

Where have the mushrooms gone? - Timothy Wangusa

My kinsmen, where have the mushrooms gone?
Where have all the mushrooms gone?
That sprouted in homestead and everywhere?

Country Peace - Mahmud Yussop

The rustling leaves
bring that wondrous feeling
the town people miss
called country peace.

The Guelder-Rose - Lesia Ukrainka

The Cossack is dying, the maiden crying:
"Let me stay beside you, deep in earth I would be lying!"

A very big white elephant - Tsogdorjin Bavuudorj

A very big, white elephant
Has passed through the world.

City in the East - Emma Moughabghab

At the centre, upon the peak of the grey hill,
you hold the beating heart of the gyroscope;
it goes round and round and back again:
surrounded by fleeting shadows of multiple lives,
it melts in the summer heat in an iridescent simulation
of the shimmering lights and whispering voices of the city.

I am legion - Andrew King

I am the lost one trapped in depression;
I am the broken one trapped in my rage;
I am the hurting soul chained to addiction;
I am self-harmer abused at young age –

Clock - Pierre Reverdy

In the warm air of the ceiling the footlights of dreams are illuminated.

Second to none - George Cosbuc

Her shoulders with fair braids are graced,
Lithe as the wheat-stem is her waist,
Her sable apron laced with taste —
She's all in all for me.
When she is near, I take alarm;
When she is off, I come to harm;
When others take her by the arm,
Priests pray to set me free!

The First Book of the Æneis (lines 1-18) - Vergil

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,
And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,
Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.

Bruno Bends, Falls (1) - Raúl Zurita

In front the mountains emerge like a fine gauze
that curves over the shadows. The snow of the
cordillera phosphoresces lightly, like a gauze
that floats. Above, the infinite stars and the black
sky. Words are tenuous, the stars are tenuous.

A Girl Strike-Leader - Florence Kiper Frank

A white-faced, stubborn little thing
Whose years are not quite twenty years;
Eyes steely now and done with tears,
Mouth scornful of its suffering—

Song of the Search - Constance Lindsay Skinner

I descend through the forest alone.
Rose-flushed are the willows, stark and a-quiver,
In the warm sudden grasp of Spring;
Like a woman when her lover has suddenly, swiftly taken her.
I hear the secret rustle of the little leaves,

Morning Hymn - St Hilary

Hymnum Dicat Turba Fralrum

Raise the song, O band of brothers,
Let the holy anthem ring;
Sound the hymn of loud laudation,
Unto Christ, our Lord and King.

The Wives of Weinsberg - Gottfried Augüst Bürger

Which way to Weinsberg? neighbour, say!
  ’T is sure a famous city:
It must have cradled, in its day,
Full many a maid of noble clay,
  And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.

The London Convict Maid - Anonymous

Ye London maids attend to me,
While I relate my misery,
Through London streets I oft have stray'd,
But now I am a Convict Maid.

Poor Will’s in Ruthin Gaol - I.D. Hooson

Poor Will’s in Ruthin Gaol,
Dejected and depressed,
His net and gun are lying
Redundant in a chest;