Sea Breeze - Stéphane Mallarmé

The flesh is sad, alas, and there’s nothing but words!
To take flight, far off! I sense that somewhere the birds
Are drunk to be amid strange spray and skies.

The Day is Past and Over - St. Anatolius

The day is past and over;
  All thanks, O Lord, to Thee;
I pray Thee now that sinless
  The hours of dark may be:
O Jesu, keep me in Thy sight,
And guard me through the coming night.

Mother - Guido Gezelle

No picture now
is left to me.
no portrait here
     below,

Song of the Sampo: The Song of Creation - Elias Lönnrot

The Lapp with the crooked back
Fostered an ancient feud,
A spite from long past time
Against old Väinämöinen.

unknown - Lynn Paden

only remembered
when needed

Child Who Dances For the Wedding - Vagif Bayatly Oner

Child, who dances for the wedding of the neighbour
Ten houses away,
Under the leaf of a rose,
In the shape of a rose petal,

Murder of an African nation - Annie Moyo

You are a third world capitalist leader;
With a thousand words spoken yet not one with meaning,

Dedication - Wole Soyinka

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

Prayer of Eugenius

Monarch of infinite majesty, Maker and Lord of creation,
Feeble and vile at thy feet I dare to implore thee for favours; —

from Alasdair of Glengarry - Sìleas na Ceapaich

You were the yew above every forest,
You were the strong steadfast oak,

The Swan - Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin

I'll leave the mortal world behind,
Take wing in an flight fantastical,
With singing, my eternal soul
Will rise up swan-like in the air.

I met four guinea-hens - Alfred Francis Kreymborg

I met four guinea-hens today,
Creaking like pulleys.

Lullaby of the Onion - Miguel Hernández

The onion is frost
shut in and poor.
Frost of your days
and of my nights.
Hunger and onion,
black ice and frost
large and round.

Exhortation to Battle - Callinus

How long will ye slumber? when will ye take heart
And fear the reproach of your neighbours at hand?

The Sea-Migrations - Caasha Lul Mohamud Yusuf

Declaiming this poem, a gabay¹, I alliterate in D to start debate,
to disseminate, to disclose to you: the public.
Hey, you - be diligent! I'm trying though it's difficult
to destroy the injustice, demolish the status quo.
Sea-migration disables my people, I want to drive it back.

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 122-172) - Joost van den Vondel

Apollion:
No creature hath on high mine eye so pleased
As those below. Who could so subtly soul
With body weave and two-fold Angels form
From clay and bone? The body's shapely mould
Attests the Maker's art, that in the face,
The mirror of the mind, doth best appear.

My sweet youthfulness is gone - Pierre de Ronsard

My sweet youthfulness is gone,
my early strength is broken;
I have black teeth and white hair;

A stir for Seacole - Anonymous

Dame Seacole was a kindly old soul,
And a kindly old soul was she;
You might call for your pot, you might call for your pipe,
In her tent on "the Col" so free.

i’d like you to go with me - Ana Paula Inácio

i’d like you to go with me
through life
like a sail

An Old Woman of the Roads - Padraic Colum

O, to have a little house!
    To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
    The pile of turf against the wall!

The Winter Galaxy - Charles Heavysege

The stars are glittering in the frosty sky,
Numerous as pebbles on a broad sea-coast;

Her Granddaughter Learns the Alphabet - Olive Senior

I myself had learnt the alphabet, once, long ago,
in a place that was small and known.
But my forgetfulness has grown.

No Traces Left - Rajathi Salma

There are objects
everywhere in this room.

Vases await
the visitor’s gaze.

Praise of Peace - Bacchylides

To mortal men Peace giveth these good things:
Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song;
      The flame that springs
On carven altars from fat sheep and kine,

Oh pearl of the nose-ring - Bihari Lal

Oh pearl of the nose-ring, thrice blessed are you;
there is no limit to your good fortune!

Corinna in Vendome - Pierre de Ronsard

Darling, each morning a blooded rose
Lures the sunlight in, and shows
Her soft, moist and secret part.
See now, before you go to bed,
Her skirts replaced, her deeper red —
A colour much like yours, dear heart.

The Shark - E.J. Pratt

He seemed to know the harbour,
So leisurely he swam;
His fin,
Like a piece of sheet-iron,
Three-cornered,
And with knife-edge,
Stirred not a bubble
As it moved
With its base-line on the water.

We did it - Yehuda Amichai

We did it before the mirror
And in the light. We did it in darkness,
In the water, and in the high grass.

I have in heaven a friend - Nils Frykman

I have in heaven, a Friend so good,
He has redeemed me, with His own blood,
From Satan, and this world of sin;
He always hears when I make request,
A crown He's promised, the very best,
Which I may wear there, with joy and zest,
When I eternal life shall win.

Legs on the Signpost - Tomaž Šalamun

The insane devotee throbs with his
small legs, I don’t dare more.