Venice masks

Sunday, 31 March 2024

Ode 4 - Odysseus Elytis

A solitary swallow * and Spring's great worth is found
It takes a lot of work * to make the sun tum round
Their shoulders to the Wheels * it takes a thousand dead
It also takes the living * to offer up their blood.

Saturday, 30 March 2024

To say you and I - Eduardo Milán

To say you and I is to enter the circus
there the lion, there the circle of monkeys,

Friday, 29 March 2024

You do not Want Me? - Gahuan-Beyg

You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet Tamour-leng was maimed,
Going on crippled feet,
And he conquered the vast of the world.

Thursday, 28 March 2024

Come, my beloved! - Muhammad din Tilai

Come, my beloved! And I say again: Come, my beloved!
The doves are moaning and calling and will not cease.
  Come, my beloved!

Wednesday, 27 March 2024

Poetic Human Operation - Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta

I write to you, you read me, 
in the most distant strangeness, 
under the skin and inside it, 
blind lovers clinging to the signs. 

Tuesday, 26 March 2024

Loneliness without remembering - Hérib Campos Cervera

Oh, cloud voice! Oh, Velvet! 
Giving a name to your moss music 

Monday, 25 March 2024

African Presidents - James O. Gaygay

Your empty promises surge our expectations
We swallow the lies your tongue preached
Our bellies became conceived by your deceits
Frustration, disappointment, and regrets are our sons and daughters
They play in the vicinity of our minds
You poli-tricked our minds with your political games

Sunday, 24 March 2024

Moral reflections (Sonnet XXI) - Vincenzo da Filicaja

Hebe once wild streams of false delight their source 
Betray'd, this feeble heart inundating; 
Turbid with eddies which vain passions bring; 
Sense their dark fount; my breast their barren course.

Saturday, 23 March 2024

Kabirau, my Anointing Oil - Ueantabo Fakaofo

KABIRAU, KABIRAU
Sweet and pleasant is your scent
I seek to break my evil spell

Friday, 22 March 2024

Childhood was Mud-Play and Dirty Fingernails - Liyou Libsekal

I was born to a woman whose hands are washed with ritual
balancing act
temperatures and tempers
home grown versus raised afar,