We present this work in honor of the Ching Ming Festival.
Lin Huiyin Chinese 1904 – 1955
I say, you are the April of this world; Your laughter ignites the winds hither and thither; Tinkling and dancing to the brilliant lights of spring. You are the soft haze of April mornings, Dusk blows the mellowness of the breeze, The stars glittering subconsciously, fine rain drops sprinkle like wine amid the flowers. That gentleness, gracefulness, is you, It is you wearing a radiant crown of a hundred flowers, You are innocence, dignity, You are the full moon night after night. Ivory swathes after melted snow, is like you; New shoots of verdant green, is you; Tender joy, the sparkling ripples carry long awaited white lotuses of your dreams. You are the trees that bloom, The swallows that chitter between the roof beams, —— you are love, warmth, Hope, You are the April of this world!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 140th birthday.
Angelos Sikelianos Greek 1884 – 1951
With her hair closely cropped up to the nape Like Dorian Apollo’s, the girl lay on the narrow Pallet, keeping her limbs stiffly frozen Within a heavy cloud she could not escape…
Artemis emptied her quiver—every arrow Shot through her body. And though very soon She’d be no virgin, like cold honeycomb, Her virgin thighs still kept her pleasure sealed…
As if to the arena, the youth came Oiled with myrrh, and like a wrestler kneeled To pin her down; and although he broke past
Her arms that she had thrust against his chest, Only much later, with one cry, face to face, Did they join lips, and out of their sweat, embrace…
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.
Leila Kasra Persian 1939 – 1989
Do not leave me alone Open your eyes Look, your youth is gone. I want to be twenty years old I want to be thirty years old I want to be this year’s flower when spring comes Do not leave me alone Open your eyes Look, your youth is gone. How soon will the winter cold come? It comes and covers the snow with flowers Nothing has colored Hanam anymore My white hair is a sign. How many memories of love in this white hair The heart falls in love again This is a hope How many memories of love In this white hair My heart will fall in love again, that’s a hope. I wanted to be the owner of the gift whose garden has flowers and nightingales Like the days of youth again Be happy and be a firecracker. How many memories of love In this white hair My heart falls in love again… This is a hope How many memories of love In this white hair My heart will fall in love again, that’s a hope. Do not leave me alone Open your eyes and see, your youth is gone. I want to be twenty years old I want to be thirty years old I want to be this year’s flower when spring comes Do not leave me alone Open your eyes Look, your youth is gone.
In honor of Greek Independence Day, we present this work by one of modern Greece’s most independent poets.
Maria Laina Greek b. 1947
I ignore poetry – not all the time – when the blood throbs on walls when pottery falls to pieces and life uncoils like thread in a bobbin I spit at my sorrow and completely ignore poetry when colours plague my soul yellow blue and orange I withhold my hate and calmly ignore poetry when your eyes tie my stomach into knots
What’s more – not all the time – I ignore poetry when it becomes a quaint ambition
We present this work in honor of Dia de la Memoria.
Leopoldo Marechal Argentine 1900 – 1970
Hummingbirds buzz in the morning’s red branch. Wonder of wonders!
Today, young gravedigger, I buried a hundred days and nights like dead birds. I yank this yoke of hours from my shoulders. And today, unfleeing heart, my hand destroys a hundred dawns withered as herbs pressed in your daybook.
An inscription scatters on the tomb of time.
This morning strands of road whip-cracked under my drunken heels. I come from night: like two green fruits my eyes dangle over the world.
Bell-ringer of distances: underfoot a path, faded away and avoided, sprouts like a fugue tree. And taut as a slingshot, it shoots pebbles from sleep into the fragile air.
Today the first morning of the world has risen between two nights. Who woke that lark, time harvested, that slept on your dry branch?
Oh, heart, red bobbin undone in the dripping day’s palm: a door, as yet unopened, creaked! And a king happier than the word sun fills our shoes with blue coins.
Happiness! A girl drinks up all the sky in the well. Her wind apron unclad her…
A spider-thrush appeared and tangled the whole hill in the threads of its songs.
There, where the iron stirrups are kept, Life! sang the reed-colored men…
My happiness escapes and trembles the light’s fresh branch.
Bare-heeled boy riding the flank of morning, my happiness, that digger of silence, will shake the tree that sprouts the most birds.
Ah, it is taller, the air’s dome, and it coins our voices, free-timbred, unique. My nerve-tree is end-rooted in morning.
I am the test of the unfledged world. My hands, fused to rudders of sun, guide this day under tender skies. My steps tie this net of roads.
Hand of the sling-shooting god, you were tossed like the nimblest stone from his sling. Long scream in the bracketed silence; companion of the curving night’s road, that is how you rise.
Wordless friend, let your voice unravel the oldest face.
My hands, hollowed by the rudders of sun, guide this day through the wind. I arrived from morning: like two green fruits my eyes dangle over the world.
I have seen distance on its knees like a god to whom no one brings gifts, and death, gentler than a llama skin, molds itself to the shape of our dreams…
Hunter of happiness: I tie a hundred bleeding birds to my waist.
In the brittle twig forest with diamonds for eyes I’m as moonstruck as a paper dog howling at a paper moon. The night is kept ajar for all the rampant fairy tales that will trick me out of the land of the living. But it is neither goblins nor wicked spells that liberate the mazed woods. I wake in the black undergrowth locked by fright that the stage is set. My frozen limbs are struck by the achromatic sight. Whom do I call for? Who lies beside me in bed? If I think of the moods of the sea, affluent and amok I am no longer high and dry stranded by injury but as firm as a rock in the watery night. Three birthday candles drip bright wax upon my fingers. one for the ocean one for the mountain and one for me.
We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Human Rights Day.
Jeni Couzyn South African b. 1942
You are too naked for touching. If I stroke your brown skin as you sleep you may break. I irritate your long dreams. I depress your awakening. I am no good for you in your alien habitation.
Waiting for you to wake I wait for a return from a long voyage, not knowing what scurvy violence you bring back to embarrass my clean house. Wherever I sow perfection it grows into weeds. O my beautiful
How time changes the clean seed, how the corruption of absence on my body, my damp hands. Awake I am in sleep also, treacherous and lonely. I don’t know where to go, where to find rest. Come back.
We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Austin Clarke Irish 1896 – 1974
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top Is whistling and the sun is brighter Than God’s own shadow in the cup now! Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.
Faintly through mist of broken water Fionn heard my melody in Norway. He found the forest track, he brought back This beak to gild the branch and tell, there, Why men must welcome in the daylight.
He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse, The shouts of gillies in the morning When packs are counted and the swans cloud Loch Erne, but more than all those voices My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.
In little cells behind a cashel, Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound. But knowledge is found among the branches. Listen! That song that shakes my feathers Will thong the leather of your satchels.
We present this work in honor of the Nigerian holiday, Mothering Sunday.
Molara Ogundipe Nigerian 1940 – 2019
When they smile and they smile and then begin to say with pain o their brows and songs in their voice: ‘the nose is a cruel organ and the heart without bone for were the nose not cruel, it would smell my love for you and the heart if not boneless, would feel my pain for you and the throat, O, has no roots or it would root to flower my love’; run for shelter, friend, run for shelter.
Poets Corner 