Truth Is Mute - Sujata Bhatt

Truth is mute, she says,
but you need words to find it.

A bull’s head in water, a mermaid’s split tail –
centuries in silt, and the words that came down to us:
a blue spell of longing, now translucent on paper.

She gets up - Anna Kamienska

She gets up, moves away from her closed mouth,
She, immobile for so long,
Walks! Steps carefully, like someone
Getting up after a long, long illness.

Questions by a workman who reads - Bertold Brecht

Who built seven-gated Thebes?
In the books stand the names of kings.
Did the kings drag the boulders there?

The Praise of Age - Robert Henryson

Wythin a garth¹, under a rede rosere,
Ane ald man and decrepit herd I syng;
Gay was the note, suete was the voce and clere;
It was grete joy to here of sik a thing.
"And to my dome²," he said in his dytyng,
"For to be yong I wald not, for my wis³,
Off all this warld to mak me lord and king:
The more of age, the nerar hevynnis blis.

To Kill An Olive - Mark O'Connor

Nobody knows how long it takes to kill an olive.
Drought, axe, fire, are admitted failures. Hack one down,
grub out a ton of mainroot for fuel, and next spring
every side-root sends up shoots. A great frost
can leave the trees leafless for years; they revive.

Asleep in the Spring - Meng Hao-jan

Sleeping in spring, I don’t feel the dawn
though everywhere birds are singing.
Last night I heard sounds, blowing, raining.
How many flowers have fallen down?

---

Meng Hao-jan [Meng Haoran] (Chinese: 孟浩然) (689 or 691 – 740) China
Translated by Tony Barnstone
Source: Poetry of China

Diwan IV:16 - Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi

Because of your illness, O Lord, our illness
is so great; our illness, misery and pain;

The wish - Anacreon

Niobe on Phrygian sands
Turn'd a weeping statue stands,
And the Pandionian Maid
In a swallow's wings array'd;

Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise - Bassey Ikpi

Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise
Like sometimes it was best when
Girls were girls and boys were boys.

A Vignette - Carl Spitteler

A troop of children scales the ridge, and cries
Challenge to April skies.
     "Come on! No fear!"