Home Truths - Sandile Ngidi

She says come in,

Feel at home

Her face a platter of unpretentious love

An African Girlchild - Christopher Kudyahakudadirwe

She wakes up early in the morning and works like a mother

Which she is not but only a child.

Nile - Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin

I am the first Earth Mother of all fertility.

I am the Source, I am the Nile, I am the African, I am the beginning!

Great bull with testicles - Apuk Jurwir Dinka tribesman

Great bull with testicles has been killed¹

It is Divinity

Urohs Sexy - Emelihter S. Kihleng

sexy is a popular word

throughout the world

like Coke

Hailli 1 - Pachacuti

O Creator, root of all,

Wiracocha, end of all,

Lord in shining garments

who infuses life

and sets all things in order,

Serenade (from Songs of Dzitbalche) - Anonymous

Oh to kiss

Your mouth

At the loose railing

Of the picket fence!

Sundjata’s Conception - Anonymous

After it had happened

That Sundjata’s mother had become pregnant,

When she had been pregnant for one year,

Susu Sumanguru Baamangana’s diviners by stones said to him,

‘The child who will destroy your kingship

Has been conceived within Manding.’¹ 

The warrior song of King Gesar (Part 1.I.i) - Anonymous

The white smoke of the juniper rises

Fragrant and dense from the burning coals,

Billowing into an empty shining sky,

A vast mirror-like expanse

Unclouded by the shadow or birth or fear of death.

Poem by the Emperor - Emperor Yūryaku

Girl with your basket,

     with your pretty basket,

with your shovel,

     with your pretty shovel,

gathering shoots on the hillside here.

Song of the Sea (שירת הים, Shirat HaYam) - Anonymous

“I will sing to the Lord,

For He has triumphed gloriously!

The horse and its rider

He has thrown into the sea!

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring (The Iliad, book I) - Homer

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring

Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!

That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign

The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;

Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,

Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.

Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!

烈文 (Lie Wen) - Anonymous

Ye, brilliant and accomplished princess,

Have conferred on me this happiness.

Your favours to me are without limit,

Agni, or the Fire - Visvavârâ Âtreyî

1. 

Lighted Agni flames forth high, 

Flings a radiance on the sky, 

And his lustre, glorious, bright. 

Mingles with the morning light. 

And Visvavârâ chants her holy prayer, 

Faces the east, and brings her gifts to Fire! 

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Prologue) - Anonymous

He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands.

I will teach about him who experienced all things, alike,

Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.

Commendation to Atum at Dawn - Anonymous

Recitation

Sun Atum, this Unis has come to you—an imperishable akh, 

lord of the property of the place of the four papyrus-columns.

Your son has come to you, this Unis has come to you. 

You shall both traverse the above, after gathering in the netherworld, 

and rise from the Akhet, from the place in which you have both become akh. 

To the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida (temple Hymn 15) - Enheduanna

Most ancient and terrible shrine,

set deep in the mountain,

dark like a mother's womb ...

What solitude you have - Carmen González Huguet

What solitude you have if you are asleep.

What dreadful silence in the night.

I peer into the mysterious abyss

Where there is no light, or name, or sound.

Vondel's Lucifer (Act II, lines 77-127) - Joost van den Vondel

Belzebub:

There hear I Lucifer and him behold.

Who from Heaven's face can drive the night away.

Gratitude for New Bounties - Li Yu

Beneath the moon, before the steps, all cherry blossom has fallen,

Enwreathed in smoke, she looks sorrowful lying in bed.

Portrait of José Cemí - José Lezama Lima

No combat did he unleash, as panting

was the custom set between his breath

and the breeze or tempest.

A bar of chocolate - Georgi Savchev

has it become a habit

rather a regular sail

between two

Order of the day - Marcel de Bruin

Don't give up this land

We're not

all dead yet

To My Father - Yazid I

Must then my failings from the shaft

Of anger ne'er escape?

And dost thou storm because I've quaff'd

The water of the grape?

Praise be to Thee, O Christ, the Creator - Godescalcus

Praise be to Thee, O Christ, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Saviour.

Of the heaven, the earth, the sea, angels, and men.

Whom alone we confess to be God and Man.

Fortune - Laura Chalar

I dreamed that you were reading my palm,

in the same cotton shirt I last saw you in

The dead poet friend - Callimachus

They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead; 

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 

Looking for your own face - Farīd ud-Dīn ʿAṭṭār

Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.

You can never see your own face,

only a reflection, not the face itself.

To the Memory of Sydney Dobell - John Stuart Blackie

And thou, too, gone! one more bright soul away

  To swell the mighty sleepers ’neath the sod;

The Lusiad (extract from Book I: Islands in the Indian Ocean) - Luís Vas de Camões

Whilst thus in heaven's bright palace fate was weigh'd

Right onward still the brave Armada strayed:

Right on they steer by Ethiopia's strand

And pastoral Madagascar's verdant land.

Before the balmy gales of cheerful spring,

With heav'n their friend, they spread the canvas wing,

The sky cerulean, and the breathing air,

The lasting promise of a calm declare.