Tell me - Véronique Tadjo

Tell me
The word of the Griot
Who sings Africa
From times immemorial

Cataclysm and Songs - Conceição Lima

Happy what's left of me after I'm gone
If only one of the songs sung
Lives beyond the person singing in me now.
Yet I would not save from the slaughter
A single one of the songs I sang and sing.

Wild Dogs Under My Skirt - Tusiata Avia

I want to tattoo my legs.
Not blue or green
but black.

Tomorrow is not guaranteed - Cecile Marie Martine

Tomorrow is not guaranteed...
Life is too precious
for throwing stones,
misunderstanding,
confusion,
misinterpretation
are human errors.

Goodbye Guinea, goodbye! - Raquel Ilombé

I went singing solo
a song of love and forgetfulness,
the footsteps
I left in the sand,
that the waves gradually erased.

The silent witness - Iosephus del Ton

The swift wings of centuries but brush against my sides:
Whole kingdoms lie ruined before me.

My Sanctuary - Mary Jae Stowers

Four frozen walls
Stood mighty still
Gazing upon me,

The Culture that Lies - Gabriel Ndende

#Say no to Tribalism

we see bombs now those bombs break our homes now we are homeless hoping to find homes in heaven

Lake Engolasters - Sícoris

Still and icy water...
The lake is beautiful and lovely,
a mountain placidity,

Heartbreak - Josep M. Llompart

As if they suddenly abolished
the summer fennel, the corner
that waves
so wildly covet;

Conscience and War - Antigua Sister

He didn’t go to war
He didn’t think he had any enemies
He felt he had brothers in far-off places
that he’d love to get to meet some day.

The Mother's Song - Jean M. Auel

Out of the darkness, the chaos of time,
the whirlwind gave birth to the Mother sublime.
She woke to Herself knowing life had great worth,
the dark empty void grieved the Great Mother Earth.

Summer Memory - Marie Under

The door ajar, I stood at point of day,
Tiptoe for you and with awakened eyes.
The sun's gold slipper trod the gravelled way,

The Will - Saghir Ouled Ahmed

1
I was almost certain.
but now I’m of a cast-iron certainty that I’m going to die
a death of strange account
in the summer
or in the third half of August
to be precise

Temporarily Free - Rodney Roskruge

Thomas Sankara died for ideas
which still live on
today, tomorrow
red carpets for red berets
which can not stand upright
weighed down by tender bellies
made from Egypt, France and others

Micra - Mirza Rahchan Kayil

When you lie with me and love me,
You give me a second life of young gold;

Burn - Inger-Mari Aikio

in the morning I'm horny
but there are guests on the way

Africans - João Melo

Our paths are as old
as the ones worn by mankind.
We carved paths since the beginning, since we departed
our forests of origin and crossed the still-fertile Sahara,

Thee, O Christ, the Father’s splendor - Rabanus Maurus

Thee, O Christ, the Father’s splendor,
Life and virtue of the heart,
In the presence of the angels
Sing we now with tuneful art,
Meetly in alternate chorus,
Bearing our responsive part.

Who will listen to me - Toyo Mori

"Mama. where are you?
Papa. are you around?"
 

They are mine.
But am I theirs?
I'm confused.
 

When I cried. I cried alone,
No father listening to my pain,
No mother wiping my tears.
No brother's hand comforting me.

Lot's wife - Iryna Tsilyk

“There’s nothing in this country,” Lot’s wife says
impetuously and with disdain. “But it’s true. What can you get here?”
The soup’s boiling, someone else’s child is sleeping (for twenty zloty an hour),
while Lot drives back cars from Holland to sell.

Words of Woe - Poltu

I found you a word in my dictionary:
Enchanting, like you, a dancing fairy
You found me another in your book of words:
Revolting, 'cause I’m strictly for the birds

Roots and Rain - Haya Alhajri

The walls once echoed with our names,
A choir of love, of laughs, of games.
Now silence sleeps in every room,
Where memories bloom through quiet gloom.

A phone-call - Rafiq O’zturk

My poor dad
would love to be proud of me.
He is glad
if he finds something
that was lost long ago.

Q’esintuu - Odi Gonzales

no longer rooted in me no longer
is the roaring force
of a horn blower

O Holy Spirit, blessed Comforter - César Malan

O Holy Spirit, blessed Comforter, 
Who hast revealed the Saviour to my heart, 
Lead me again to him whom I adore, 
And the assurance of his love impart. 

Dusk - Yefon Isabelle

I am different, I told him.
But dear, he said
There isn't nothing special about being different
The world will only jeer at your ache.

Silence - René Maran

My relatives are dead. As for my friends,
My childhood friends, where are they?
Life has scattered them;
Scattered them like seeds blown by the wind.

Eggs - Tomás Iriarte

Beyond the sunny Philippines
An island lies, whose name I do not know;
But that’s of little consequence, if so
You understand that there they had no hens,

To my book - António Corrêa

Go, son, you're old enough,
you're emancipated;
you need to travel the world,
learn a bit about everything.

Question and answer - Björnstjerne Björnson

The Child 
Father! Within the forest's bound 
No bird I found, 
No sound of song the woods around. 

Canto Nine - Tonino Guerra

It must have been raining a hundred days,
       and the water that saturated
the roots of all the plants
Reached the library and soaked all the holy words
which were closed up in the convent.

All growth of the forest - Spervogel

All growth of the forest,
The deep-hidden gold,
All secret abysses,
Thine eye doth behold;

Family Portraits - Anna Maria Lenngren

Upon an old estate, her father's heritage, 
A shrivelled countess dowager 
Had vegetated half an age; 

Refreshment - Mary Electa Adams

Hast thou had hours when life seemed empty all,
And waste the garden thou wert set to till,
Like tide-swept sands that only white and still
Unanswering lay beneath the heaven's gray pall?

Path to the Huacas - Nora Alarcón

Route of the potato
life created
in the land of the morochucos
an offering to Apu Pariahunca
before the harvesting of the native potatoes

While unperishing love melted my bones - Manikkavacakar

While unperishing love melted my bones,
     I cried
I shouted again and again,

Blonde - Andrés Bello

Do you know, blonde, what favor I request
When I cover the altars with offerings?
Not rich furnishings, not superb lands,
Neither a table that flatters the appetite.

Assimilation - Eeva-Liisa Manner

I will show you a way
that I have travelled.

On the Incarnation - Gregory of Nazianzus

Foolish who worships not th’ eternal Word 
as equal to the high Father in heaven. 
Foolish who worships not th’ incarnate Word, 
as equal to the heavenly Word on High, 
but cuts from Father’s might His Word, or else 
severs the Word from human shape, our breadth. 

blue bridge - Viktor Krivulin

where gloomed as lilac
an upturned bowbend
blue bridge shadow—

Capriccio - Uroš Zupan

Form is what remains;
the glimmer of divine shapes,
light, colors, odors and tastes,
dreams after Coleridge's pipe –

Lament V - Jan Kochanowski

Just as a little olive offshoot grows
Beneath its orchard elders’ shady rows,
No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb,
Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim —

In Harmony with the World - Bodufenvalugey Seedi

One is never expected
In a sailboat to fly
As the wind carries it,
You simply lie.

Another year for Jesus - Francis Ridley Havergal

Another year for Jesus!
How can I wish for you
A greater joy or blessing,
O fellow-worker true?

Sweet kisses (Senryu) - Mario Odekerken

Sweet kisses linger,
laughter slips between soft breaths,
love steals the last word.

Quietly my wife - Toivo Lyy

Quietly my wife
breaths beside me,