We present this work in honor of the 5th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how I kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover
We present this work in honor of the Moroccan holiday, Green March Day.
A White Bird
A breath condenses
Even density can be pleasant
Each wall widens its cracks
And retains the call
A height that remains a height
Springs that have gathered the winds of the fields
A Red Bird
It may have travelled the river in one night
The road may have guided it through the upper layers
I ponder the mystery of its redness
Then forget the sky
That has taken it
There
A Green Bird
There are sleeping feathers before me
Feathers that blast me with the fire of distance
And feathers without a body that bend
And collect
In a point
Between us speech is fluttering
A Blue Bird
So drunk in the evening it’s almost unable to return
It would prefer that departure go on
Without departure
Reflections
Of light in the pool
Grow longer
A Black Bird
Each thing wants to emulate it
Water in the pots
Words on their birthdays
Caravans across borders
A girl not yet wet with dew
But the thrush
Emulates only
Itself
It stays on branches of joy
A Yellow Bird
That window remains open for it
as they sit face to face and
the bird stays because of
an approaching silence until
without even pecking the grains it
soars just as its past did just as
its future will at dawn
A Colorless Bird
Elated it chirps on one of the nights of solitude
Before it flies
Where light unites with vibration
A draft that startles
Its visitor with a wing whose recurrent glitter
Is ever-changing and I can see it from a distance
It flies
So that what I see
Is this thing that resembles nothing distant
In honor of Guy Fawkes Night, we present this work by one of 17th century England’s most contemplative poets.
Tell me thou safest End of all our Woe,
Why wreched Mortals do avoid thee so:
Thou gentle drier o’th’ afflicteds Tears,
Thou noble ender of the Cowards Fears;
Thou sweet Repose to Lovers sad dispaire,
Thou Calm t’Ambitions rough Tempestuous Care.
If in regard of Bliss thou wert a Curse,
And then the Joys of Paradise art worse;
Yet after Man from his first Station fell,
And God from Eden Adam did expel,
Thou wert no more an Evil, but Relief;
The Balm and Cure to ev’ry Humane Grief:
Through thee (what Man had forfeited before)
He now enjoys, and ne’r can loose it more.
No subtile Serpents in the Grave betray,
Worms on the Body there, not Soul do prey;
No Vice there Tempts, no Terrors there afright,
No Coz’ning Sin affords a false delight:
No vain Contentions do that Peace annoy,
No feirce Alarms break the lasting Joy.
Ah since from thee so many Blessings flow,
Such real Good as Life can never know;
Come when thou wilt, in thy afrighting’st Dress,
Thy Shape shall never make thy Welcome less.
Thou mayst to Joy, but ne’er to Fear give Birth,
Thou Best, as well as Certain’st thing on Earth.
Fly thee? May Travellers then fly their Rest,
And hungry Infants fly the profer’d Brest.
No, those that faint and tremble at thy Name,
Fly from their Good on a mistaken Fame.
Thus Childish fear did Israel of old
From Plenty and the Promis’d Land with-hold;
They fancy’d Giants, and refus’d to go,
When Canaan did with Milk and Honey flow.
After the storm and tossing of the waves,
After all the dangers of the voyage,
There is no hesitation for the seamen
To enter the peaceful port.
Let it even be unknown!
Let it not be on the map!
The thought, the hope is delightful for them,
There to free themselves from troubles.
And if then they discover by a glance
On the shore, friends, kinsmen,
“Oh happiness!” they exclaim
And fly into their arms.
Life! thou art sea and tossing of the waves!
Death! thou art port and peace!
There will be the reunion
Of those separated here by the wave.
I see, I see… you beckon
Us to the mysterious shores!…
Dear shadows! Keep
A place near you for your friends!
We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Culture Day.
Chilling autumn rains
curtain Mount Fuji, then make it
more beautiful to see
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 110th birthday.
Freely beside me the vineyards are running and unbridled
Remains the sky. Wildfires trade pinecones and one
Donkey bolts uphill
for a little cloud
St. Heracleitos’s day and something’s up
That even noses can’t diagnose:
Tricks of a shoeless wind snagging the hem
Of Fate’s nightgown and leaving
Us in the open air of capricorns exposed
Secretly I go with all the loot in my mind
For a life unbowed from the beginning. No candles no chandeliers
Only a gold anemone’s engagement for a diamond
Feeling its way to where? Asking what? Our moon’s half-
shadow needs
You to console even the graves
Homoethnic or not. The crux is that the scent of earth
Lost even to bloodhounds
With its weeds onions and creeks
Must be restored to its idiom
So what! A word contains you peasant of night’s green
Efessos! Forefather sulphur phosphorus your fourteenth generation
Inside the orange groves gold words
Sharing the scalpel’s chisel
Tents as yet unpitched
others midair
Lost poles suddenly grinding. Sermons
Rise from the seafloor of the facing coves
Twin scythes for theater or temple
Fresh valley springs and other curly streams
Of thus and so. If ever wisdom
Planned circles of clover and dog grass
Another world might live just as before
your fingerprint
Letters will exist. People will read and grab
History’s tail once more. Just let the vineyards gallop and the sky remain
Unbridled as children want it
With roosters and pinecones and blue kites flags
On Saint Heracleitos’s day
child’s is the kingdom.
We present this work in honor of All Saints’ Day.
Upon a darkened night
on fire with all love’s longing
– O joyful flight! –
I left, none noticing,
my house, in silence, resting.
Secure, devoid of light,
by secret stairway, stealing
– O joyful flight! –
in darkness self-concealing,
my house, in silence, resting.
In the joy of night,
in secret so none saw me,
no object in my sight
no other light to guide me,
but what burned here inside me.
Which solely was my guide,
more surely than noon-glow,
to where he does abide,
one whom I deeply know,
a place where none did show.
O night, my guide!
O night, far kinder than the dawn!
O night that tied
the lover to the loved,
the loved in the lover there transformed!
On my flowering breast,
that breast I kept for him alone,
there he took his rest
while I regaled my own,
in lulling breezes from the cedars blown.
The breeze, from off the tower,
as I sieved through its windings
with calm hands, that hour,
my neck, in wounding,
left all my senses hanging.
Self abandoned, self forgot,
my face inclined to the beloved one:
all ceased, and I was not,
my cares now left behind, and gone:
there among the lilies all forgotten.
In honor of Reformation Day, we present this work by one of Chile’s most independent poets.
A man I didn’t know
Appears in all the country’s newspapers
He is lying on the streets
His body is perforated:
Now we all know him.
We present this work in honor of the author’s 150th birthday.
Your steps, children of my silence,
Holily, slowly placed,
Towards the bed of my vigilance
Proceed dumb and frozen.
Nobody pure, divine shade,
That they are soft, your steps selected!
Gods!… all the gifts which I guess
Come to me on these naked feet!
If, of your advanced lips,
You prepare to alleviate it,
An inhabitant of my thoughts
The food of a kiss,
Does not hasten this tender act,
To be soft and not to be not?
Because I lived to await you,
And my heart was only your steps.
In honor of Republic Day, we present this work by one of modern Turkey’s most prominent poets.
Pass through me, I’ll remain, I’ll wait, pass through me,
but where you pass through me I cannot know.
I was told, there’s a ripe fruit behind the curtain of patience,
the world will teach you both patience, and the ripe fruit’s taste.
They said, you waited like these trees, a vision like these trees,
sorrowful like these trees.
I was opened, I was closed, opened, closed, I saw
those who went as much as those who came,
where is the end of patience, where the grief-stricken ass,
where the audacious fruit,
where is the garden?
If only someone would come… if only someone would see… someone had come… opened… stayed
she stays with me still.
For how long this emptiness rings within me, who
slayed the garden’s merry widow, the mulberry opposite me?
I glanced with it the most, wanted so much
just once for it to speak.
Were it all up to me I’d have kept quiet longer, yet I creaked wearily,
lest the rusted lock of my tongue be undone,
a stray line somewhere be hummed, the worms inside me crawl.
I saw it all, I saw it all, the end of patience!
if someone would come, would see, would see, now,
the wind is swaying me.
Poets Corner 