We present this work in honor of the poet’s 145th birthday.
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
We present this work in honor of the 15th anniversary of the poet’s death.
You enter that light
which binds night and day,
that swirling mist of pain,
fortunate pain, which has no
need to be seen. It shimmers
on the ever-present, ever-
inactual shore.
Simple worker, like those
who build men’s houses—
Breathe life into the whirlwind
where the dead shall find you,
dear friends
absorbed in daylight.
Break into separate hearths
the burning bread of solitude,
leavened with tears and joy
destined for your flesh and blood—
the one who passes, he who wounds you
without knowing, he who cures you
with his indifference: your son.
Want nothing more, close your eyes
in the secret of the dew;
drown your flame-torn heart.
And when you can forget
you once were whole, then embrace
the world in silence.
Rain:
anoint my skin
wash my eyes.
My night opens
for you.
My wandering.
This endless erring
haunts me.
What voices
from what skies
do you bring to me?
What god
cries
that I don’t hear?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Only chance made me come and find
my hen, stepping from her hidden
nest, in our kitchen garden.
In her clever secret place, her tenth
egg, still warm, had just been dropped.
Not sure of what to do, I picked up
every egg, counting them, then put them
down again. All were mine.
All swept me away and back.
I blinked, I saw: a whole hand
of ripe bananas, nesting.
I blinked, I saw: a basketful
of ripe oranges, nesting.
I blinked, I saw: a trayful
of ripe naseberries, nesting.
I blinked, I saw: an open bagful
of ripe mangoes, nesting.
I blinked, I saw:
a mighty nest full of stars.
We present this work in honor of the 20th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Who has the tigers and who the sheep
never seems to make any difference.
The result is always the same:
She wins,
I lose.
But sometimes when her tigers
are on the rampage,
and I’ve lost half my herd of sheep,
help comes from unexpected quarters:
Above.
The Rusty Shield Bearer,
neutral till then,
para-drops a winning flower —
yellow
and irrelevant —
on the checkerboard
drawn on the pavement in charcoal,
cutting off the retreat
of one tiger,
and giving a check to the other;
and quickly follows it up
with another flower —
just as yellow
and just as irrelevant — except
that it comes down even more slowly;
a flower without a search warrant
that brushes past her earlobe,
grazes her cheek,
and disappears down the front
of her low-cut blouse —
where she usually keeps
her stash of hash —
to confuse her even further, with its mildly
narcotic
but very distracting fragrance.
We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Heritage Day.
A new man is born,
Full of strength and agility,
To demonstrate conventional wisdom,
In defence of the fatherland,
Through cannons of criticism,
His dragon force and enthusiasm,
Shall perform a daring combat against fascism.
Man shall initiate a campaign,
Against genocidal crimes,
Committed and perpetrated against beloved humanity,
Today housing is another means of exploitation,
And before the spirit of Hitler destroys man,
Wake me up to join you in the march,
To a people’s kingdom.
Man is swallowed by limited pleasures of time,
Man is forsaken like a memory lost,
Say it aloud, justice is absent and democracy is nil,
Say it aloud, to counter the state lie,
Again shout it aloud,
The government is riding fast to a greatest fall,
From one great defeat to another.
Tuberculotive bodies of young and old,
Shall come to pass,
Institutionalised violence is silent in holocaust by design,
However like a surprise the day shall dawn,
And the world shall mourn,
And the burial of fascism,
And a threat to world peace shall be no more,
The doors of hell are golden,
Possessed and displayed by Western powers,
Self-interest is a vehicle to the graveyard,
Hidden worms shall come to exposure,
And collaborators like giant spiders,
Shall belong to the dustbin of history,
All this shall take root before dawn.
Shalom is the language of world peace,
North, East, South and West,
The Inkomati accord is not freedom but a deal,
No state power shall legislate me not to love man,
Do something to facilitate change in Africa,
Do something to fling the doors of Pollsmor and Robben Island prison wide open,
Do something favourable for the exiles to return back home,
Oh! Africa let all this be done before dawn,
Oh! Peace loving South Africans let it be done before dawn.
We present this work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Could it have been mine,
that face—cold, alien—
that an unexpected mirror,
crossed by a quick look,
flashed me back?
It was a moment’s chance,
since, at second glance,
the face had turned familiar—
my mouth again, my eyes
wide in surprise.
Now, though I verify
oddness of bone and eye,
we are no longer one,
myself and mirror-man.
Trust has gone.
I had thought them sure,
the face and self I wore,
Yet, with no glass about,
what selves, whose unsuspected
faces stare out?
In honor of Nicaraguan Independence Day, we present this work by one of the country’s most evocative poets.
A stunted oak without greenery
how dry yesterday seemed to everyone,
son of the moor and the drought,
next victim of the woodcutter,
who was like a girl without love
that in its sterility was consumed,
with the rain last night oh, what a joy!—
It has dawned this morning in bloom.
I have been a little surprised
when contemplating in the flowering oak
so much tenderness of spring,
who steals in the gardens of dawn,
those mother-of-pearl flowers with which it blooms
the dead arms of which nothing expects.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 110th birthday.
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
I was born in a white sleeping city
under the pious wing of its eaves,
where in large flowerbeds they look stretched out
its carpet of whiteness the lemon trees.
Staining the horizon they spin restlessly
dominating the landscape from above,
the tireless blades of the weather vanes
defying the clouds in their madness.
City of my grandparents, with your upright
Centennial laurels! Your burning
flamboyants, your lilies of pure white dawn…
Every time I think of you sweetly and distantly,
I compare you in my dreams to a sultana
who, lying on the bed, stretches!
Poets Corner 