We present this work in honor of the First Day of Passover.
Lift up my steps, O Lord, my savior,
I’d go to my country with a placid joy;
an ignorant people pursues me now,
and taunts me with a thunderous noise.
Take me, quickly, to a Galilee mountain,
and send your anger across their skies;
there I’ll see your light, my crown,
and say: Now I can die.
We present this work in honor of Dr. Ambdekar Jayanti.
Leave your books behind.
Since memory,
Like knowledge, is a traitor,
Erase every hoarding of your horrible past.
At last, when you enter her world
Of fraying edges and falling angels
Don’t barter words where touch will do and be the truth.
For once allow her silence to sear, strip your life-layers
Because she who knows the truth will not know the tale.
Among them too are the Muses
For everywhere
To flute and string the young girls
Are dancing,
In their hair the gold leaves of the bay:
The dance whirls them away:
Age or disease, no toil,
Battle or ill-day’s luck
Can touch them, they
Are holy, they
Will outlast time, exempted
From the anger of the Goddess
And all decay.
Here the hero came
With the head
That shocked a royal house, turning
King and all into stone:
It was long long ago, if
Time means anything;
Long, long ago.
We present this work in honor of the 240th anniversary of the poet’s death.
If every man’s internal care
Were written on his brow,
How many would our pity share
Who raise our envy now?
The fatal secret, when revealed,
Of every aching breast,
Would prove that only while concealed
Their lot appeared the best.
I’ve grown into a child
jealous of my own eyes.
Mad that they get to host you,
grinning for when I’ll steal you.
Like parents my eyes demand caution,
holding you beyond reach.
They make me think of nothing
but later—someday—the Day of Release.
We present this work in honor of the 310th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Look you, most poetry of novice poets
Is lovelocks and hyacinths,
Roses and nightingales,
Wine and cup
They cannot leave
The orbit of the beloved
The body and cheek,
Lip and moist eye
Now they wander to spring,
Then to the meadow
And touch upon the cypress,
The rose and jasemin
They cannot walk
The untrodden path
Nor turn on
The less-travelled road
They can neither hunt
Poetry’s exalted ideas
Nor lasso the unseen world’s game
They make their way
On commonplaces
On well-known and experienced words
That double couplet bends
Under two donkey-loads of stuff
The cloth of its meaning
Cannot be fresh
So do not compose poetry
With empty words
Do not draw your net
Fishless from the sea
You want to study the night of my spirit
There, in the pit of my soul
the place never reached
by the clear sunlight of hope
But don’t ask me what sleeps
beneath the veil of speechless shade;
stop beside the abyss, and weep
as if by the edge of a grave
We present this work in honor of Buddha Purmina.
Through endless ages, the mind has never changed
It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.
It isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future.
true or false, male or female. It isn’t reserved for
monks or lay people, elders to youths, masters or
idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.
It isn’t bound by cause and effect and doesn’t
struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.
You can’t own it and you can’t lose it. Mountains.
rivers or walls can’t impede it. But this mind is
ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the
mind of the senses. So many are looking for this
mind, yet it already animates their bodies.
It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 115th birthday.
Each time I sinned a door half-opened
and the angels who hadn’t thought me beautiful in my chastity
tipped the vessels of their flowering souls.
Each time I sinned a door seemed to open
and tears of compassion dripped in the grass.
But if the sword of my remorse pushed me from the skies
each time I sinned a door half-opened.:
the people thought me ugly;
only the angels thought me beautiful.
We present this work in honor of the 115th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Bord á Plouffe, Bord á Plouffe,
W’at do I see w’en I dream of you?
A shore w’ere de water is racin’ by,
A small boy lookin’, an’ wonderin’ w’y
He can’t get fedder for goin’ fly
Lak de hawk makin’ ring on de summer sky.
Dat ‘s w’at I see.
Bord á Plouffe, Bord á Plouffe,
W’at do I hear w’en i dream of you?
Too many t’ing for sleepin’ well!
De song of de ole tam cariole bell,
De voice of dat girl from Sainte Angèle
(I geev’ her a ring was mark “fidèle”)
Dat ‘s what I hear.
Bord á Plouffe, Bord á Plouffe,
W’at do I smoke w’en I dream of you?
Havana cigar from across de sea,
An’ get dem for not’ing too? No siree!
Dere ‘s only wan kin’ of tabac for me.
An’ it grow on de Rivière des Prairies-
Dat ‘s what I smoke.
Bord á Plouffe, Bord á Plouffe,
How go I feel w’en I t’ink of you?
Sick, sick for the ole place way back dere-
An’ to sleep on ma own leetle room upstair
W’ere de ghos’ on de chimley mak’ me scare
I ‘d geev’ more monee dan I can spare-
Dat ‘s how I feel.
Bord á Plouffe, Bord á Plouffe,
W’at will I do w’en I ‘m back wit’ you?
I ‘ll buy de farm of Bonhomme Martel,
Long tam he ‘s been waitin’ a chance to sell,
Den pass de nex’ morning on Sainte Angèle,
An’ if she ‘s not marry -dat girl- very well,
Dat ‘s w’at I ‘ll do.
Poets Corner 