The rain is about to fall, Come through my window, butterfly.
Outside, when they become wet, Those charming colors will melt away, The flower will fall to the ground, It won’t be able to save you, small butterfly, Come through my window, butterfly!
A little one will manage to catch you, He will place you in a small box and take you away, After, he’ll paste you into a book You’ll die, then, butterfly, Hide inside my window, butterfly.
We present this work in honor of Argentina’s Dia de la Memoria.
Pedro Bonifacio Palacios
Argentine
1854 – 1917
Don’t embrace defeat, even defeated, don’t feel yourself a slave even enslaved, trembling in terror, think you fearless, and charge with fury, badly wounded. Have the tenacity of the rusted nail, though old and ruined, become a nail as ever. Not the cowardly folly of the turkey that folds its plumage at first tremor. Proceed like God, who never cries, or like Lucifer, who never prays; or be like the oaktrees, whose grandour has need of water and won’t beg… Let bites and yells of vengeance Rolling on the dust!, your furious head.
Marvelously, friends, of what has harvested a burning passion therefore not for that, there would be lowered, accompanied by the moon, the night, from the highest heaven to Earth. My passion is that I love in such a way that if I broke up, my heart would follow him.
Oh, I wish I knew.
If there is a way to be alone together which do not reach the ears of the spy. How wonderful I want to be alone with my beloved living, even when it is in my gut and in my chest.
This is how the shloka goes — women, nails and hair once they’ve fallen just can’t be put back in place said our Sanskrit teacher.
Frozen in place out of fear we girls held on tight to our seats. Place, what is this ‘place’? We were shown our place in the first grade. We remembered our elementary school lessons Ram, go to school, son, Radha, go and cook pakora! Ram, sip sugar syrup, Radha, bring your broom! Ram, bedtime, school tomorrow Radha, go and make the bed for brother. Aha! This is your new house Look Ram! Here’s your room “And mine?” Oh, little loony! Girls are wind, the sun and the good earth They have no homes “Those who don’t have a home, where do they belong?”
Which is the place from where we fall become clipped nails, fallen hair trapped in combs, fit only to be swept away Houses left behind, paths left behind people were left behind questions chasing us, too left behind Leaving behind tradition, it seems to me I’m as out of context as a short line from a great classic scribbled on a BA examination paper
But I don’t want somebody to sit down and analyse me to pigeonhole me At long last, beyond all contexts with real difficulty I’ve gotten here
We present this work in honor of Human Rights Day.
Gladys Thomas
South African
b. 1934
Don’t sow a seed Don’t paint a wall Tomorrow it will have to fall
Let the dog howl and bark Tomorrow he will Sleep in the dark Let the cock crow Let the hen lay Tomorrow will be their last day
Let the children chop trees Let them break Let the destructive little devils Ruin and take For tomorrow they know not their fate
Don’t sow a seed Don’t pain a wall Tomorrow the yellow monster will take all
Let our sons dazed in eye Rape and steal For they are not allowed to feel Let the men drink Let them fight Let what is said about them Then be right For they are not allowed to think
So bark, howl, crow, Chop, break, ruin, Steal, drink, fight, Let what’s made of us be right
Tomorrow we gaze at a new view Seas of sand given by you And we say Sow the seed Paint the wall Be at home in our desert for all You that remade us Your mould will break And tomorrow you are going to fall
On my desk is a photograph of you taken by the woman who loved you then.
In some photos her shadow falls in the foreground. In this one, her body is not that far from yours.
Did you hold your head that way because she loved it?
She is not invisible, not my enemy, nor even the past. I think I love the things she loved.
Of all your old photographs, I wanted this one for its becoming. I think you were starting to turn your head a little, your eyes looking slightly to the side.
When Thames, in plaintive murmurs, lav’d the grott Where once his darling Pope each care forgot; Where, with the Muse, he pass’d the smiling day, Whose strains celestial crown’d the moral lay; Each drooping Swan with sorrow view’d the shore, And mourn’d, in melting dirge, their Bard no more: Ah! flown, O Thames! thy fairest Swan (they sung) Whose warbling lyre immortal Genius strung, Truth, Nature, Virtue, touch’d the trembling chord, While mute Attention caught the Poet’s word. And must thy beauteous stream incessant mourn? Is Genius banish’d, never to return? No—thy sweet banks, immortal Thames! shall prove His fond affection, and the Muses’ love; Succeeding years will sure a Walpole give, In whose progressive mind shall genius live: His wish to crown—each Muse—each Grace shall meet, And fix on Strawberry Hill their lov’d retreat.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Takis Sinopoulos
Greek
1917 – 1981
Come with me tonight, I’ll embrace you with my leaves and with my clouds. I’ll wrap you round in countless metamorphoses and voices, until merely your white bones remain in the moon’s foam.
Poets Corner 