We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
One nail was missing.
Who is to blame?
The shoe got loose,
And the horse got lame.
The horse was limping,
The commander is dead.
Cavalry is defeated,
Enemies rush ahead.
Killing men and women
Enter they the city…
For lack of one nail.
What a pity!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
When you told me you would be gone
But a little while,
I nodded gently.
I was so young, so innocent.
The roads of Europe are running away from the war,
Running fast over the mined bridge and past the men
Waiting there, with watch, ready to maim and arrest them,
And strong overhead the long snorings of the planes’ tracks
Are stretching like rafters from end to end of their power.
Turn back, you who want to escape or want to forget
The ruin of all your regards. You will be more free
At the thoughtless centre of slaughter than you would be
Standing chained to the telephone-end while the world cracks.
I know, friend,
it is all within me as in
a sonorously mute coffer.
All sleeps within me,
tremulously quiet,
and in active rest,
in a brief palpitation of palpitating entrails,
in such sweet presence as to be barely presence at all…
I know, friend,
my friend, blinder than dead serpents,
my friend, softer than overripe fruit:
It is all within me.
It is all within me silent, subterranean, fused
in pale stratas of light and silence,
nourishing my life,
growing my life…
There are sorrows that wear red in the streets.
There is a pride that screams.
There are joys in colourful dress
and songs that rent the sun.
There are many things, my friend, many things
– my friend, softer than overripe fruit –
at the surface of its skin.
And in me all is
silent,
dimmed,
so silent I can even forget it,
as dimmed as a child dying.
All as in a mutely sonorous coffer
trembling in stillness…
We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Countries on a misty atlas are
houses that smell of mold now,
plastered with the blood of wounded seagulls.
One turns around clumsily,
in the house it entered by mistake,
comparing the corpse of the world on its wings
with what happens inside.
Outside, street kids play
red and green games,
pathetic tissue with limitless freedom!
The pained body of the seagull drops.
Love is a little rug;
A little sea counted by its walls!
We present this work in honor of Dia de la Raza.
Before my window four roads meet.
They called from east, west, south and north,
And into the royal night to greet
The call my vagrant dreams rushed forth.
Yearning by every path to move,
My baffled heart could follow none,
Forever with the moon in love,
With what is dead or what is gone.
Four tempting roads for phantasy,
Beneath the flowers and warbled odes…
Oh, would that my poor heart might be
Perfume diffused over all those roads!
This poem is for you.
It’s a reprieve.
It says
nothing in your little black heart
can frighten me,
I’ve looked too long
into my own.
Thank you for the gift
of your uncertainties.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
It was in the middle of our tragedy
And all the long day sitting at her glass
She combed her bright gold hair. To me it was
As though her calm hands quieted a blaze.
It was in the middle of our tragic days.
And all day long sitting before her glass
She combed her bright gold hair as one who plays
In the very middle of our tragedy
A golden harp without belief, to pass
The long hours, sitting all day at her glass.
She combed her bright gold hair and seemed to be
Martyrizing at will her memory
All the long day while sitting at her glass,
Reviving still the spent flowers of the blaze,
Not speaking as would another in her place.
She martyrized at will her memory
It was in the middle of our tragic days
Her dark glass was the world’s facsimile
Her comb, parting the fires of that silken mass,
Lit up the corners of my memory.
In the very middle of our tragic days
As Thursday is in the middle of the week
And sitting there before her memory
She saw within the glass (but did not speak)
One by one the actors of our tragedy
Dying, whom most in this dark world we praise
I need not call their names You know what memory
Burns on the hearth of these declining days
And in her golden hair when she sits there
And combs in silence the reflected blaze.
Translation by George Dillon
We present this work in honor of Gandhi Jayanti.
The land resists
Because it cannot be
Tempted, or broken
In a chamber. It records,
By carefully shuffling the leaves,
The passage of each storm, rain
And drought. The land yields
In places, deliberately,
Having learnt warfare from the armies
It fed. The land is of one
Piece and hasn’t forgotten
Old miracles: the engraving of a bison
On stone, for instance. The land
Turns up like an unexpected
Visitor and gives refuge, it cannot be
Locked, or put away. The land
Cannot sign its name
It cannot die
Because it cannot be buried
It understands the language
It speaks in dialect.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 140th birthday.
“Are you feeling cold?” you asked me.
I couldn’t deny that I was:
you’d detected it in my countenance
and possibly even my voice.
You were also feeling cold.
I could tell, though not by your face;
it’s as if your soul were kept on display
to mine in a crystal vase.
“Close the door!” you commanded.
I thought: what we ought to close
instead is that book of yours…
That book was the source of the cold.
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