Growing Blind - Rainer Maria Rilke

She sat, like all the rest of us, at tea.
It seemed at first as if she raised her cup
Not quite as all the others held theirs up.
She smiled: her smile was pitiful to see.

Sailing - Henrik Nordbrandt

After having loved we lie close together
and at the same time with distance between us
like two sailing ships that enjoy so intensely
their own lines in the dark water they divide
that their hulls
are almost splitting from sheer delight

Wolf One-Eye on Odin's Street - Juris Kronbergs

On the pavement he found, not a heart,
but a potato
It wasn't even round,
but irregular and finished
like a sentence in a praised but plodding
literary effort

Sonnet - Jean de la Taille

If e'er ill luck did gentleman betide,
In tears and troubles steeped, that man am I.
I love to live in peace, yet war must ply;
I love glad cheer, yet must in sorrow bide.

In the glad hours of the morning - Homero Aridjis

In the glad hours of the morning
it is lovely to stroll out under the sun.
Its rays spill down around the arms
and the radiance of its rings reverberates
through the blue ocelli in the Wings.

You dying on the phone - Valérie Rouzeau

You dying on the phone my mum he will not last the night see dad.
The train a dark rush under rain not last not die my father please oh please give me the get there soon.
Not deadying oh not desperish father everlast get up run fast –
Hand watch the time we’ve got to Vierzon outside it’s tipping hail.
We miss each other I have no idea passing through Vierzon that in these train arrival times you’ve died.
Not die oh please but everlast until the nurses’ corridor of white.
Until your bed as fast the engine into Lyon la Part-Dieu.
Until your forehead over now and all together in the little room and not forget.

Psalm at the end of the night - Hatif Janabi

Hopes are lost because too many are devout
in their supplication.
Shapes howl under the weight of sinners.
And I sit alone chanting the last song
the dreamers sang
and an outcast hummed to the wilderness.
I rinse the dust of old proverbs
with autumn tears
with the whistling of the stars that stare vacantly
at the theatre of words.

Bedouins - Fadhil Al Azzawi

Three Bedouins in a desert,
Carrying sacks strapped to their shoulders,

The hurricane - Haji Gora Haji

A hurricane once arrived         in the town of Siyu
Not only for this person nor for that        it was chaos
It uprooted the baobabs         but left the palm trees
The hearts were troubled.

Mimesis - Giampiero Neri

From the shapes and lines
one notes on butterfly wings