We present this work in honor of the 30th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Audre Lorde American 1934 – 1992
Coming together it is easier to work after our bodies meet paper and pen neither care nor profit whether we write or not but as your body moves under my hands charged and waiting we cut the leash you create me against your thighs hilly with images moving through our word countries my body writes into your flesh the poem you make of me.
Touching you I catch midnight as moon fires set in my throat I love you flesh into blossom I made you and take you made into me.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Guo Moruo Chinese 1892 – 1978
The street lights are on in a distance As if numerous stars show. The bright stars loom in the above As if numerous street lights glow. I believe there must be a beautiful market street In that aerial heaven with cloud clear. The goods displayed on that street Must be rarities which we don’t have here. You see, that shallow Milky Way Must be not very wide. The cowherd and weaving lady separated by it Must be able to visit each other on a ride. I believe at this moment along that street Sauntering there must be they. If you doubt, please look at that shooting star, Which may be the lantern they are taking on their way.
I had seen coconut trees and tamarinds and mangos the white sails drying in the sun the smoke of breakfast across the sky at dawn and fish jumping in the net and a girl in red who would go down to the shore and come up with a jug and pass behind a grove and appear and disappear and for a long time I could not sail without that image of the girl in red and the coconut trees and tamarinds and mangos that seemed to live only because she lived and the white sails were white only when she lay down in her red dress and the smoke was blue and the fish and the reflection of the fish were happy and for a long time I wanted to write a poem about that girl in red and couldn’t find the way to describe the strange things that fascinated me and when I told my friends they laughed but when I sailed away and returned I always passed the island of the girl in red until one day I entered the bay of her island and cast anchor and leaped to land and now I write these lines and throw them into the waves in a bottle because this is my story because I am gazing at coconut trees and tamarinds and mangos the white sails drying in the sun and the smoke of breakfast across the sky and time passes and we wait and wait and we grunt and she does not come with ears of corn the girl in red.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 80th birthday.
Mamoni Raisom Goswami Indian 1942 – 2011
Oh Pakistan, celestial land! Give us your heart! And take our heart in return! Once we shared the same sky! Sky with the same sun! We shared the same pain like twins on the battlefield to remove the dust.
Now our flesh is ripped apart By that meandering barbed-wire fence! Oh they have drawn that dividing line on a flimsy paper! That line of agony and tears Can anyone draw that line In our raw flesh, inside our heart?
Friends! Be happy where you are… now! Memory never fades, poets say distance only purifies it… We sat under the same tree, Enjoyed the fragrance of the same flower Till that time like a dagger cut those rivers into several pieces! Destroyed the mountains and flower gardens where we had played!
And those banks where we had counted those fig-coloured waves! Like the honey laden lips of the damsels! We wore the same clothes woven by our mothers! We shivered in winter and in summer our sweat slid down our backs
We enjoyed the same wine from the poems of Ghalib Momin and Zauk We cried together in pain! Under the blood stained sky.
Oh Pakistan! Celestial land Give us your heart And take our heart in return! No we need not speak now Only silence speaks in a clear voice. Oh Pakistan! Silence can bring the fragrance of a mother’s soul Silence can reveal. The heavenly beauty of Sutlej, Chenab, and the Red River Of the East! Silence can be loud like a million voices Oh Pakistan! Celestial land! Our eyes misted by the Smoke of blossoming gun powder! Our soul wounded by the unknown fires! May these eyes now witness the new Sunrise On the banks of Sutlej, Chenab, and in the Red River of the East! Oh Pakistan, celestial land! Give us your heart! And take our heart in return
We present this work in honor of the 160th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Julio Arboleda Pombo Colombian 1817 – 1862
Unhappy who seeks in appearance bliss and ephemeral praise, and changes his mind with the change of the versatile public conscience!
The present is your only providence; yields to the blowing of the wind that throws him to good without faith and evil without hope; that in erring with the world is his science.
And happy the independent male who, free from worldly bondage, aspires, between pain and sorrow,
to the eternal truth, not to the present one, knowing that the world and its truths they are only vanity of vanities!
The bird that sings the song of pain is love The courier who knows the tongue of the Unseen is love The existence that calls you to nonexistence is love And that which redeems you from you is love
We present this work in honor of the 530th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Jami Persian 1414 – 1492
The price of a man consists not in silver and gold; The value of a man is his power and virtue. Many a slave has by acquiring virtue Attained much greater power than a gentleman And many a gentleman has for want of virtue, Become inferior to his own slave.
Poets Corner 