Romeo digs Juliet - Grand Corps Malade

Romeo lives on the ground floor of building 3
Juliet, in the building opposite, on the top floor
Both are 16 and every day, when they see each other
There grows in their eyes a desire to share things
It’s on their first date that they take that step
Under a sad autumn sky that rains on their bodies
They kiss like crazy, unafraid of the wind or the cold
For love has its reasons that the seasons don’t understand

In time - Léo Ferré

In time …
In time, it goes, everything goes away.
We forget the face and we forget the voice,
The heart, when it stops beating, there’s no point
Searching any further, you must let it go and that’s good.

A Song and Three Questions - Amjad Nasser

I.
Talk is silver,
poetry is gold,
and women are the ringing of both metals.

Outskirts: Winter without People - Gennady Aygi

this shining
of light from from the world
along the revetment (o empty malleability
of dead resonance! —

Iventory of Things Left Behind - Liana Alaverdova

Things left behind: one casserole, enormous,
Ideal for pilav; Great-grandma’s samovar
In brass, antique (or nearly); with medallions
Assorted works of art, still life with melon,

How to Walk on the Seashore - El Mahdi Qeraz

To be conscious is an evil being walking
Ask an insect on the seashore jumping
From one end to the other drawing
A wandering circle

Girls at Bwandilo, Lilongwe - Anonymous

Ladies of Bwandilo

They shameless signal you down
Clad in their min skirts
Min skirts endowed with long slits

It seemes that Tunis is an auncient towne - Anonymous

It seemes that Tunis is an auncient towne
Neere to the ruines of Carthage once so prowde,

I think about you, Mogadishu - Delalorm Sesi Semabia

You star in my nightmares
You seduce in my temple
You challenge my sleep.

Kampala Beggar - David Rubadiri

Dark twisted form
Of shreds and cunning
Crawling with an inward twinkle
At the agonies of Africa.

Banjul this afternoon - Obinna Chilekezi

I can’t comprehend the weather
as the sun goes laughing in this cold
around the town.

Dear Cape Town - Kerry Hammerton

I would like to give you a giraffe
like the one in the central park of Cuidad Juárez.
In that northern Mexican town
they treat their giraffe like a tourist.

Cairo - Nesma

I'd go to the airport an hour before the arrival time of your plane even though I know it'll arrive an hour late.
I'd go an hour early because I want us to share your first experience of Egyptian timing.
Egypt is not bound to the pace in which Earth loops her way around the sun like the lake swan, because Egypt always preferred belly dances to ballet and it shows well in weddings.

Spring in Nairobi - Ngwatilo Mawiyoo

Spring in Nairobi
is Jacaranda trees in bloom
a blissful blue, bold, edging
toward lavender gladness.

Addis Ababa - Fekade Azeze

I walk your streets, but make no strides:

your shops and kiosks crowd my eyes

ENTs and dentistries

music stalls

drug shacks

photo booths

jumbled!

chaotic!

The Bible - Alice Sedgwick

What taught me the first great cause
Who existed ere creation rose
And gave us our universal laws
        The Bible

March - Susan Frances Harrison

Here on the wide waste lands,
Take—child—these trembling hands,
Though my life be as blank and waste,
My days as sorely ungraced
By glimmer of green on the rim
Of a sunless wilderness dim,
As the wet fields barren and brown,
As the fork of each sterile limb
Shorn of its lustrous crown.

The Price of Progress - Aileen Shirra

Chestnuts lie strewn on the cow grass
Cast down among the leaves by carelessly gusting gales
And prematurely aborted from their spiky wombs,
White underbellies betraying their vulnerability,
By fat- cheeked, scolding squirrels