Space - Qassim Haddad

I don't know how

I sit this way, my head the hat of the universe and my hands in a frenzy.

I am not tired or sad

I see whiteness, towers of chaos

What are you Nicaragua? - Gioconda Belli

What are you—

a little triangle of earth

lost in the middle of the world?

Babyfly - Tshifhiwa Itai Ratshiungo

Instinct told us to look out the window as quickly

as the babyflies came out of nowhere. The sun knew

to shed its glare on every curtain with the opening

of the clouds. Mothers did not shout at our eagerness

The sun’s tongue - Rec Puk

Jiok’s hide is as bright as moonlight,

bright as the sun’s tongue.

My Jiok shines like gold,

like a man’s ivory bracelet.

In the house a window - Aigerim Tazhi

In the house a window

In the window a pot

In the pot a twig

The life above, the life on high - St Teresa of Ávila

The life above, the life on high, 

Alone is life in verity; 

Nor can we life at all enjoy 

Till this poor life is o'er. 

The Gift of Speech - Mariya Avvakumova

The Gift of Speech

You have overcome so many trials . . .

Native Land - Olavo Bilac

Love your native land with faithful pride and care!

Child! you'll never see a land like this so fair!

See what skies! what rivers! forests! and what sea!

Streetlamp - Homero Expósito

A humble neighborhood with houses

that reflect its tin sorrow.

A human neighborhood

whose stories are sung in tangos

Aphorism - José Craveirinha

There once was an ant

sharing isolation with me,

we used to eat together.

Food - Katerina Stoykova

Tomatoes bring love.

Potatoes raise consciousness.

 

In Position - Lauris Dorothy Edmond

I want to tell you about time, how strangely

it behaves when you haven't got much of it left:

after 60 say, or 70, when you'd think it would

Green - Janet Lees

Green marks Ordinary Time,

but green is not at all ordinary.

Reading a Wife - Yotsumoto Yasuhiro

A wife is not composed of words, so

Unlike a novel that takes till dawn

To devour she cannot be read

through in a night

My Standpoint - Tsegay Mehari

Obeying my conscience

Giving no ears to my flesh

Feeding my soul

Wild-Peace - Yehuda Amichai

Not the peace of a cease-fire,

Not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

But rather

As in the heart when the excitement is over

And you can talk only about a great weariness.

The Story - Kamal Butros Nasser

I will tell you a story …

A story that lived in the dreams of people …

A story that comes out of the world of tents …

The choice of friends - Saadi Shirazi

One balmy day in gentle June,

While sporting in my bath so free, 

In came a friend with perfumed clay,

And gave the fragrant mass to me.

The Village Of Deceptions - Fakhira Batool

The world O! Friend,

Is a village of deceptions,

No deference is observed

Behind the pardas.

O unity of threefold light - Metrophanes of Smyrna

O unity of threefold light, 

Send out thy loveliest ray. 

And scatter our transgression's night, 

And turn it into day! 

The Amores: Elegy IX - Ovid

Nape, skilled at binding the straggling locks and arranging them in order, 

and not deserving to be reckoned among the female slaves; 

known, too, by experience to be successful in the contrivances of the stealthy night, 

and clever in giving the signals; 

An Egg and a River - Marial Awendit

Am I the best candidate to throw

A boiled egg into the Nile?

I remember breaking

A gourd full of water,

ln the past - Salif Keïta

ln the past, no one questioned to you

ln the past, no one questioned to me

ln the past, that‘s how it used to be

ln the past, whatever happened

ln the past, no one wanted to know

I thought of walking round and round a space - Seamus Heaney

I thought of walking round and round a space

Utterly empty, utterly a source

Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place

In the Land of Art - Anselm Hollo

the artists

work on the art farm.

The Lord is an ocean of oneness - Sultan Bahu

The Lord is an ocean of oneness

in which lovers swim as they please, free of care.

One Year After - Claude McKay

I

Not once in all our days of poignant love,

Did I a single instant give to thee

My undivided being wholly free.

The myth of the streets - Tarik Sujat

Bearing countless tyre tracks on its chest

The songs of this city will cease one day.

For You - Agha Shahid Ali

Did we run out of things or just a name for you?

Above us the sun doubles its acclaim for you.