A Village Girl

We present this work in honor of the 45th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Exuberant with youth,
beautiful as an early monsoon cloud,
dark-skinned,
on languorous feet
the village girl comes walking,
proud, stately, graceful,
along the snaking path.

She trails her scarf behind
and pushes back her hair;
quick to be embarrassed,
she glances down at the twin pitchers of her breasts.
A woman, restless:
her laughter ripples
like a brook spilling over its banks—
her lips—from teeth as bright as foam.

Along the road she stops,
bending a little
to smooth her skirt; turns her face
when she hears her lover’s footsteps—
a village lad draws near,
her ardent suitor;
while steadily he stares at her,
surprised,
rejoicing,
she shuts her eyes.

Beside the well
enchanted man and woman!
When she draws up the heavy jug
filled to the brim,
her breasts, like overflowing pitchers,
are tensed so that they strain
against her tightening blouse.
She spills the water
in a shower of beauty,
then throws her scarf across her breast,
sets the jug upon her head
and starts the zigzag path for home.

Hibiscus at her ears,
she weaves a garland—
shephalika, white lily, oleander,
and trumpet-flower,
braiding blooming stars all through her hair,
and roams the woodland with her cattle,
calling out with lark and cuckoo.
In the deserted forest
she adorns herself through every season
with jasmine, cassia and fragrant herbs,
forest-flame and mango blossom.

In Vain

We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.

How many poems of love, sung in vain!
Oh, how old becomes my soul
when I recall the ancient
absurd story of yesterday.

How many poems of love, moaned in vain!
First you were a flower, I, the Bee.
Then my heart found in your window
the bitter snow that drove me old.

How many poems of love, lost in vain!
Today, my windows are wide open,
there is sunshine… many flowers, and it’s summer…

But it’s sad to see by my doorstep,
among so many dead butterflies,
so many poems of love cried in vain!…

Translation by Octavio Corvalán

Myself in the Manner of a Troubador

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.

Mounting a horse with an abundant mane and in glittery armor, a hero
will have to have a face as dazzling as that orb of day.
But a base one ordered to sing of heroes,
I cannot have a face, however ordinary.

Like a photo of the hateful man an abandoned woman tore into shreds,
My face is torn apart and lost in advance.
Faceless, holding in both hands a lyre quite like a face,
on a hill with a view of the field shining with battle dust, under a plane tree,

or on a boulder of a cape overlooking the sea where triremes come and go,
I sit for thousands of years, I just continue to sit.
The odes that, faceless, I sing in praise of passing heroes
overflow as beautiful blood from the chest would I hade with the lyre.

Translation by Hiroaki Sato

Daydream

We present this work in honor of the 45th anniversary of the poet’s death.

You know my child
I wrote a poem for you
but don’t chastise me
for writing it is this language
that you don’t yet understand
it’s nothing my child
when you are older
you will seize this dream
that I dreamt in the middle of the day
when it’s your turn, you will tell the story of this woman
Arab prisoner
in her own country
Arab up to her white hair
her greenish eyes
the dream my child
begins
when I see a pigeon
the birds that build their nests
on the roofs of prisons
I dream of sending a message to the revolutionaries
of Palestine
in order to assure them support for victory
I dream of having wings
just like sparrows
to traverse the skies
as far as Erythrea
as far as Dhofar
arms heavy with guns
the head with poems
I want to be a passenger
on board clouds
with my war attire
combating Pinochet
in the back country of Chili
so that my blood runs
on Chilean soil
that Neruda praised
o my dream
red Africa
without hungry children
I dream
that the moon
up there is going to fall
to take out the enemy
and that the moon will leave me
in Palestine or in the Sahara
anywhere
I struggle for victory
For all people who are combatants.

The Last Look

We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.

“Her dying look was all for you.
It touched you to the last,” they said.
Are you not proud to think of that,
Though she is dead?

O death alive, is that peak proud Because
it was the last in gold?
It only knows the sky is blind,
And it is cold.

The Lives of Poets

In poetry there’s no happy ending.
Poets end up
living their madness.
And they’re quartered like cattle
(it happened to Darío).
Or they’re stoned or wind up
flinging themselves to the sea or with cyanide
salts in their mouths.
Or dead from alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty.
Or worse: canonical poets,
bitter inhabitants of a tomb
entitled Complete Works.

Translation by Katherine M. Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

from Madhushala

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 115th birthday.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan
Indian
1907 – 2003

He who has destroyed all the creeds
With fire from his burning breast,
He who quits the temple, mosque and church
A drunken heretic, unblest,
Who sees the snares, and now comes running
From Pandit’s, Priest’s and Mullah’s cunning,
He, and he only, shall today
Be in my House, a welcome Guest.

Call

We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

I love to go down into the town at the hour when the sky lies close against the horizon like a vast whale. It sinks down into the heart of the street like a worker into his ditch. The bell has swung before the windows and the panes are lit up. It is as though all the eyes of the evening were filled with tears. In an opal the lamps and the day wrestle gently with each other. The advertising signs write to each other, spreading themselves in letters of lava across the face of the buildings. The rope dancers stride over the abyss. A great long legged spider spins its web from the hooks of a bush full of flowers. An acrobat climbs up and throws himself down. Shipwrecked sailors signal foreign vessels. The houses advance like the prows of galleys with all their portholes blazing. Man runs between their golden flames like a waif in a harbor.

Dark and streaming the autos arrive from everywhere, like sharks to the quarry of a great shipwreck, blind to the fulgurant signals of men.

Translation by Kenneth Rexroth

Hoya

We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Labor Thanksgiving Day.

Hoya is now
in the middle of autumn. I am now
in the middle of misery
The misery has deep origins
It has a deep-rooted history.

Blazing summer has finally ended
Autumn breezes pass from one end to the other of the Musashino plain
My small house sits on a spot
in dark Musashino, silent Musashino

In my small house
I have a small room of my own
In the small room I turn on a light
I labor, zeroing in on my misery,
until the deep-rooted misery in my heart
thrusts its roots into the earth, and
grows into that gigantic Zelkova tree
in my forsaken backyard

Translation by Takako Lento

The Planter’s Daughter

When night stirred at sea
And the fire brought a crowd in,
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went —
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly.
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.

Poets Corner

Celebrating a world of written and spoken verse

20th Century Poems