The Baby - Kālidāsa

On parents’ knees, a naked, new-born child,

Vexing - Li Shangyin

Encountering magnificently flavoured food, the spleen, stomach not cooperating
Enjoying drink the whole night, then finding the wine vessel empty

High Ride in the Streets - Gregor Podlogar

sun rays have ripped open the clouds' bellies
the rain has stopped tourists are exhausted

The First Rule of Sinhalese Architecture - Michael Ondaatje

Never build three doors
in a straight line

Adoration - Madame Guyon

I love my God, but with no love of mine,
     For I have none to give;

Always repeating the same mistake - Anat Zecharia

Always repeating the same mistake
going up and down the escalators
passing shops, billboards, neon signs,
hundreds of thousands of things for sale: running shoes
a glass brooch, old-fashioned soap flakes, a small tube
short white socks, buy one, get one free.

Landslides - Kevin Isaac

Wishes...frozen in time
Like low-hanging fruits
Sweetening on branches of reminiscences

Grey Hair - Ashjan Al Hendi

Jasmine fixed its heart in her braid
a flowering rivulet
touched her hair
the flavor of perfume
slept on her breath

Winter - Eeva-Liisa Manner

Leaves float, hours, seasons
from room to room.

a passing glimpse of the first of may, storypoem - Hipólito Alvarado

this is the morning filled with little flags
birds
              children
people at the fiesta in the park

Seven-Headed Beast - Astrid Cabral

The more I age
the more heads I snip from the seven-
headed beast. And then I recognize him,
my intimate, my neighbour.

Mother to be do you ponder the future - Bruce Levitan

Mother to be do you ponder the future,
Wondering whether the world will be safe;
For a new baby will there be some refuge
In a land so filled with orphans and waifs?

Calcutta and I - Sunil Gangopadhyay

Calcutta is a dead weight on my heart:
I must destroy her before I go.
I shall seduce her away to Haldia port
and feed her sweets spiked with arsenic—
Calcutta is a dead weight on my heart.

Mud Flats - Kim Soo-Bok

She lies there with her hugely pregnant body.
At dawn a ship leaves, cutting through her stomach.
As it emerges from her body, headed for the sea,

When It Is Raining - Zbyněk Hejda

When it is raining,
the pond looks
as if it is just convalescing

Two Birds - Anzhelina Polonskaya

Two birds on the grey, ashy sand.
The sleeping bird is on the right; her feathers are dull

A prayer to Mwari and the ancestors at a time of drought - Anonymous Zezuru tribesmen

Tovela, our great father,¹ We have a petition for rain.

Mozart’s Requiem - Stella Vinitchi Radulescu

They have lived a stone life, a star life, a rat life,
tears wiped out by the Siberian wind, packages wrapped
in despair,
moved from prison to prison, from age to age.

War and a Woman - Saba Kidane

War and a woman I sing.
A country
needs a woman
to find peace.

Red Thistle - Umberto Piersanti

when the sirocco ceases, the bitter cliff
—the thorns remain through the long winter,
the ox moans as its white mass
sinks down through the snow—
throws out its flowers among the sticks

Ambush - Gbemisola Adeoti

The land is a giant whale
that swallows the sinker,
with hook, line and bait

I have a lover - Hafsa Bint Hamdun

I have a lover who can’t be budged

Catfish in the Woods -Yoko Danno

My dog suddenly runs off
slipping the leash
startled by a wild beast.

My Small White Dog and I - Silja Walter

My small white clog and I,
We walk through every door we see
We shiver and we cry.
We look for you. We look for me.

On the Death of his Mistress - Abu Sahet Alhedhily

Dost thou wonder that I flew
Charm'd to meet my LEILA'S view?

Illicit - D.H. Lawrence

In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of
             rainbow,
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below, in the green wheat, the labourers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.