Guard Duty - Tomas Tranströmer

I’m ordered out to a big hump of stones

as if I were an aristocratic corpse from the Iron Age.

The rest are still back in the tent sleeping,

stretched out like spokes in a wheel.

i am the richest - Dhal Jirel 'Ravi'

I have a couple of feet

My hut and my rugs

I eat cheap bread and laugh at Fate

I toil through the livelong day

Report me to you - Robert Wever

Now I beshrew his herte, that to that wyll not agree,

But yet because the tyme shall not seme very longe,

Or eate we departe, let vs haue a mery songe

The sing as folow'eth.

Yogyakarta - Albert Hagenaars

The line from the volcano’s summit

past the sultan’s palace to the sea’s abyss

spans the sacred space of the culture

in which until the end you are embedded.

If I Could Only Write - Ramón de Campoamor

“And will you write a letter for me, padre?”—

  “Yes, child—no need to tell me the address!”

“Do you know whom it’s for because on that dark evening

        You saw us walking?”—“Yes.”

 

The Inquiry - John Dyer

Ye poor little sheep! Ah! well may ye stray,

While sad is your shepherd, and Clio away!

Tell where have you been; have you met with my love,

On the mountain, or valley, or meadow, or grove?

Alas-a-day! No — ye are starv'd and half dead;

Ye saw not my love, or ye all had been fed.

Of the voice of things – Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão

Only the wind’s blast

gives lyrical sound

to the windmill’s blades.

The Journey Prayer - Brendan of Clonfert

God, bless to me this day,

God bless to me this night;

Bless, O bless, Thou God of grace,

Each day and hour of my life;

Our Assorted Quarantines - Elizabeth Kate Switaj

I’m running thirty miles of quarantine with wandering pigs and semi

-feral dogs. Beach and coral and islets complete

the two-lane road’s atoll. You said that you were strangely proud

A north-country song - Anonymous

Says t'auld man tit oak tree,

Young and lusty was I when I kenn'd thee;