We present this work in honor of Colombian Independence Day.
Jorge Gaitán Durán Colombian 1924 – 1962
Death could not beat me. I battled and lived. The restless body against the soul, to the white flight of the day.
In the ruins of Troy I wrote: “Everything is death or love” and since then I had no rest. I said in Rome:
“There are no gods, just time” and since then I had no redemption. I silenced myself in Spain, since the voice of rage defied forgetfulness with my marrow, my humors, my blood; and since then the fire has not stopped.
May the foreign land serve as a resting place for the hero. May fresh grass sing like a bee of the dust by his eyelids. I do not surrender: I want to live in war every day, as if it were the last one.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Vladimir Mayakovsky Russian 1893 – 1930
The moon is emerging. It going to be here soon. Now, it hangs in the air, full and stark. That is probably God, with a divine silver spoon, groping in the fish-soup of stars.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Anilda Leão Brazilian 1923 – 2012
I try to hear in the voice of the wind the lost echo of my childhood. And in the light-hearted laughter of little children I glimpse my former cheerfulness.
I seek in the deserted and silent streets, the joyful song of dance music and my forays of times past. Within that paved avenue,
where luxury cars roll by, I search for my ugly and poor little street. I try to see in the dolls today, so beautiful, with silky braids,
the small rag doll I rocked in my arms. I try to find in the face of first communicants traces of my innocence and of that first emotion that remained in time.
Desperate, I try to discover, in the face of innocent children my lost purity.
I search in vain, for I will never find vestiges of my happy childhood, that the years have concealed in its abyss.
We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Enrique Lihn Chilean 1929 – 1988
In your opinion one love erases another and so it is, dear, yet in love not everything belongs to the dart and quiver— false starts—or is part of the wound that bewilders all pleasure, all grief twin of death, metaphor for birth The victims of Eros survive the crime that, joyfully, they’re passive agents of its authors in a mysterious moment and they don’t forget at least I don’t: my memory of you remains, independent of love as in that painting by Magritte where the dawn sky still hasn’t dissolved night in the street nor its precious moon: a light curdled in the streetlight that darkly illuminates that road It’s true, the oxymoron is no more than a figure of speech and can be guilty of premeditation Not so myself, at least I hope not, if I tell you: one love doesn’t erase another Memory, also, in its way loves and, as someone said, “There is no forgetting.”
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Alí Chumacero Mexican 1918 – 2010
Think of your look and my oblivion leaving the thought dilated through your eyes, drowned of his own living with your meaning;
then look at your oblivion that appears in me Like a rose that gave space slight prolongation and then out the light itself that touches with its aroma,
is to give myself to you without further ado that the fight of the body against the wind, and with you dreaming of being so quiet
like a shipwrecked sea or vain attempt: because since I can’t think of you, I leave my thought forgotten in you.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Mitsuye Yamada American b. 1923
Freedom at last in this town aimless I walked against the rush hour traffic My first day in a real city where
no one knew me.
No one except one hissing voice that said dirty jap warm spittle on my right cheek. I turned and faced the shop window and my spittle face spilled onto a hill of books. Words on display.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.
Fay Zwicky Australian 1933 – 2017
Dead to the world I have failed you Forgive me, traveller.
Thirsty, I was no fountain Hungry, I was not bread Tired, I was no pillow
Forgive my unwritten poems: the many I have frozen with irony the many I have trampled with anger the many I have rejected in self-defence the many I have ignored in fear
unaware, blind or fearful I ignored them. They clamoured everywhere those unwritten poems. They sought me out day and night and I turned them away.
Forgive me the colours they might have worn Forgive me their eclipsed faces They dared not venture from the unwritten lines.
Under each inert hour of my silence died a poem, unheeded
A red glow. A furtive ray rocking the grove. Silky and shiny sateen is, unnerving the needles of the vast pine wood.
Sateen tainting carmine amid the grass and on the moss. Lit carmine burning in the hollow of the ivy. Carmine Carampangue of satiny blood smoothing the satin skin. The skin that strokes, snakes and seeks caressing the emerald with the tail of the dead, the sparkling of the green foliage lashed violently by the wind at the edge of the blue ell of the chasms, here at the beginning of the valley.
Sateen is made of blood and shiny and of treacherous velvet the fabric of the figures that now flame in the sun like knife light. Terrified under the splendor, in the blades cut by the beam, figuring holy cavities amid the murmuring nets of the forest. What silence. Of green firmament or inner bell. The woman pricks up her ears in amazement. Flame is the dress that covers her, fire the stunning skirt.
The humid rips in the lamé, pure spell of reflection, turning into blood the green virginity of the forest. The lamé splits in the green, creating blue flares in its mirror. In the simile, the bristling of a millenary, radiant tapestry:
Long drool of a silenus, Beelzebub, crawls, and the forked garrulous currents of an agitated mob of curling snakes Oh, the Leontine and Egyptian eyes of hieratic herons and owls.
Everything is velvet.
The sinuous mane of an ancient woman the black silk of a vibrant butterfly the sacred muscles of nocturnal panthers.
Iridescent volcanoes curl their spit in the distance in the distance like large, huge comet tails.
Poets Corner 