Serenade

(For you… Moon of my silences… Moon of my sad moods).

Ray of soft moonlight, streaming into my room…
In your white veils–my Flesh would melt!
This pure ghost could become the perfume
of the white spirit of your blessed mercy!
Ray of soft moonlight that comes into my stanzas
to purify my existential despair…
Since in your dawn-gauze skirts I’m like perfume,
make me change to mist, never to return!
Bear me in the draped folds of your silvered clarity!
Take me, with your hands that are love’s flowers…
Gaze upon me like a bride with torn veils
and with my crown of orangeblossoms stripped of petals! …
Ray of soft moonlight, streaming into my room,
gaze upon me, a bride who doesn’t have to be anymore!
Since in your white lace clouds I’m like perfume
make me change to mist, never to return!

Translation by Liz Henry

Standing by a Winter Field

In honor of the Korean holiday, Teacher’s Day, we present this work by a Korean poet and teacher.

A person suffering from love
even once
should visit a winter field.
There is fullness
of an empty space, pleasure
of a person giving freely.
A few fallen grains
on a rice paddy after the harvest.

A person mourning separation
even once
should visit a winter field.
There is comfort
in the heaven that eternalizes
these encounters on earth.
The eyes of a pond
looking up at faraway stars.

A person afflicted with longing
even once
should visit a winter field.
There is awareness
that to watch you is to watch me,
to be alone is to be with others.
The scarecrow
watching the empty field alone.

Translation by Chae-Pyong Song and Darcy Brandel

Plaza de la Inquición

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.

A spider’s body
limp and hairy
appeared at the bottom of my coffee

The waiter being Castilian
said passionately nothing
And why indeed should apologies
be made to me

It was I who was looking in
at the spider
It might be years
before I slipped and drowned
in somebody else’s cup

Sundays

We present this work in honor of the 70th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Sait Faik Abasiyanik
Turkish
1906 – 1954

On Sundays
I drink beer
With radishes and pistachios.
A young boy
Serves me for a pittance
But all I want
Is to be his father.

Sick

We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.

“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

The Forties

We present this work in honor of the Russian holiday, Victory Day.

The forties, fateful,
warring, frontline,
with funeral notices,
clattering trains.
The hum of the rails.
All is cold, high and barren.
Their houses have burned —
they’re heading east.
That’s me at the station
in my scruffy wool cap.
The star’s not standard issue —
it’s cut from a can.
Yes, here I am in the world,
skinny, happy, carefree.
I’ve got tobacco in my pouch —
I have a stash of rolling papers.
I joke with the girls,
and limp a little overmuch.
I break my rationed bread in half,
and I know everything on earth.
Imagine! What coincidence —
war, horror, dreams and youth!
And all of it sank deep inside me…
and only later did it wake.
The forties, fateful,
lead and gun smoke…
War wanders through the land.
And we are all so young!

Translation by Boris Dralyuk

The Voice

We present this work in honor of V-E Day.

A voice, a voice from so far away
It no longer makes the ears tingle.
A voice like a muffled drum
Still reaches us clearly.

Though it seems to come from the grave
It speaks only of summer and spring.
It floods the body with joy.
It lights the lips with a smile.

I listen. It is simply a human voice
Which passes over the noise of life and its battles
The crash of thunder and the murmur of gossip.

And you? Don’t you hear it?
It says “The pain will soon be over”
It says “The happy season is near.”

Don’t you hear it?

Translation by William Kulik

After Half a Century

We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Constitution Memorial Day.

Finally after half a century, a clearly observable law has been found:
For mankind, all matters proceed
Along geometric lines

(If you put one grain of rice on the first intersection of a game board, two grains of rice on the second, four grains of rice on the third, and continue along these lines, what vast quantities will you have by the time the board is covered? When the ancient king was told the answer, how surprised he was…)

By the time I realized what was happening, I was clinging to the earth
So I would not be shaken off as it spun with ever greater speed
My hair, dyed in two parts with night and day, had come loose
(Yet still I toyed with dice in one hand)

As it turns, it is stripped page by page like a calendar pad growing thin
A cabbage growing small, shorn of leaves before our eyes
Once, this planet had plenty of moisture
(But that was in the days when those things that now belong to dead languages –
Things such as dawn, looks, and smiles – were still portents of things to come)
That’s right, for mankind, all matters proceed along geometric lines

Four and a half more centuries into the future
The shriveled brain that revolves
Rattling in the cranium’s hollow will grow still
Like the pale eye of a hurricane

All will see its resolution in those moments
As the rolling dice tumble, turning up their black eyes
Then finally coming to a halt

Translation by Jeffrey Angles

Achilles After Dying

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

He was very tired—who cared about glory any longer? Enough was enough.
He had come to know enemies and friends—purported friends:
behind all the admiration and love they hid their self-interest,
their own suspicious dreams, those cunning innocents.
Now,
on the little island of Leuce, alone at last, peaceful, no pretensions,
no duties or tight armor, most of all without
the humble hypocrisy of heroism, hour after hour he can taste
the saltiness of evening, the stars, the silence, and that feeling—
mild and endless—of general futility, his only companions the wild goats.
But here too, even after dying,
he was pursued by new admirers—usurpers of his memory, these:
they set up altars and statues in his name, worshipped, left.
Sea-gulls alone stayed with him; now every morning they fly down to the shore,
wet their wings, fly back quickly to wash the floor of his temple
with gentle dance movements. In this way
a poetic idea circulates in the air (maybe his only justification)
and a condescending smile for everyone and everything crosses his lips
as he waits yet again for new pilgrims (and he knows how much he likes that)
with all their noise, their Thermos bottles, their eggs and phonographs,
as he now waits for Helen—yes, that same Helen for whose
fleshly and dreamy beauty
so many Achaeans and Trojans (he among them) were destroyed.