Prairie Spring

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.

Willa Cather
American
1873 – 1947

 

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

Bitter and Wild – the Smell of the Earth

We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Cherubina de Gabriak
Russian
1887 – 1928

 

Bitter and wild — the smell of the earth:
The fields are o’ergrown with dark carnations!
Having flung my garments onto the grass,
I burn, like a candle, in the evening field.
Running into the distance, my steps are moist,
Tenderly naked, I blossom by the water.
Like white coral in an overgrowth of vines,
I am scarlet in the scarlet of my scarlet hair.

Translated by Temira Pachmuss

Chansons II

Pernette du Guillet
French
c. 1520 – 1545

 

When, every day, the spark of chaste,
Pure Love betwixt us—arms enlaced—
Flashes anew; when such you see,
Ought you not, then, my lover be?

When you see how I pine, debased,
By hidden bale and bane laid waste,
Languishing in my misery,
Ought you not, then, my lover be?

When you see that I have no taste
To carp on one less beauty-graced,
And that I want you all to me,
Ought you not, then, my lover be?

When I, by some new love embraced,
Never would wish your love replaced,
Lest you lament my cruelty,
Ought you not, then, my lover be?

When you see time, in fleeting haste,
Prove me to be not many-faced
But true to you eternally,
Ought you not, then, my lover be?

Translation by Norman R. Shapiro

And I Don’t Know Why

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

Gloria Fuertes
Spanish
1917 – 1998

 

I’m sad and I do not know why;
I’ve drunk love,
and I’m still thirsty.
I’m alone… and I don’t know why
I would like to know, but I won’t tell…
I’m alone and I don’t know why,
I would like to kiss, and I don’t know who.
I’m in love… and I don’t know what.
I would like to know… and it can’t be.
I’m sad and lonely… and I don’t know why.

The Roads After the Rain

Azarías Pallais
Nicaraguan
1884 – 1954

 

Ever since he was a very young boy, he would jump for joy
when the cool rain fell from the heavens.
Jets from the roofs, your rumor had
the divine silence of melancholy.
The children with their hands covered their ears,
and listening with astonishment to the deep sounds
of the heart, which sounds as if it were the sea,
they felt a supreme desire to cry.
And as by the rain, everything was interrupted,
things were bathed in a color of oblivion.
And their minds wandered in a divine leisure,
very propitious to the tales of Sinbad the Sailor.
The rains of my land taught me lessons…
with Ali Baba, the forty thieves pass.
And they sang my dreams in the rainy night:
Aladdin’s lamp, miraculous lamp!
And as the rain falls, the oldest maid
he recounted his stories in an ambiguous way.
Another of the miracles that I sing about in the rain
is that, when its lymph falls, my city puts on a new mantle
, that when it is washed… I think of one of those
austere and impeccable Dutch cities:
a washed city, without dust , brand new,
where the cleanliness of his blessed prayer reads…
All roads are like a flower of adventure
for the sweet Quixote of the Sad Figure.

Testimony

Alicia Partnoy
Argentine
b. 1955

 

This microphone
with its cable coiling around it,
bows to me.
I walk up to it,
open my eyes
open
my book
open
my mouth.
That’s right, I open my mouth wide
and begin my story.
They say
I speak too softly,
that I am practically mumbling,
that they can’t hear
the screams piercing.
I open
my memory
like a rotten cantaloupe.

They say
I have not managed
to forcefully convey the pitiless rage
of the cattle prod.
They say that in matters such as this
nothing must be left
open
to the imagination or to doubt.
I take out
the Amnesty report
and begin speaking through that ink.
I urge: “Read.”
I, in my turn, coil around
my bowing accomplice,
this microphone.
I urge action as a prescription,
information as an infallible antidote
and, one every knot is untied,
I recite my verses.
I resist. I am whole.
This microphone
with its cable coiling around it,
bows to me.

Translation by Richard Schaaf and Regina Kreger

Report

We present this work in honor of the Mexican holiday, Revolution Day.

Estrella del Valle
Mexican
b. 1971

Juliette Seven Five:
A country lies at the bottom of the maps,
between the nooks of lineups,
on the Mike Romeo One Nine frequency,
Ninety-two degrees west.
Seventeen degrees north.
With many of the seas that lash in its favor
or against it, depending on which side of the map you’re on.
A country with eternal depressions, blue mountains,
and incorporeal dreams above sea level.
A country with imperceptible people,
with kids, men, women who get lost when they are so young
who are at the intersection of the objective.
A country with thousands of migrants who try not to see each other while
they cross the line between sanity and the greatest country.
A country with a single chain of communication,
a single bank, a single army of God,
a single tiny family that manages the stage
of a tiny nation like its ambitions
and it has a king, albeit a little one.

And a huge royal chair.
Yes, yes, that’s huge.

Echo Seven One.
Over.

Translation by Toshiya Kamei

Quarter to War

Jumoke Verissimo
Nigerian
b. 1979

 

A land slumbers under a blanket of coffeed weeds
With lashings of withered wreaths numb on gravestones
A broken fence, a lone gatekeeper, a shroud of trees
Keep the memoir of ghosts who can only sleep
When relatives insist on visiting, bringing new flowers
Which they then water with tears and dress in silence

The broken branches which are gathered under trees
The faded epitaphs speaking to the sun about memory
The dried leaves cracking with the reticence of rainfall
The shade from the high weeds crowded into themselves
The people crouching to straighten fallen headstones
On their beloveds’ graves, then murmur their departure

The footfalls fading from the streets
The trees departing from the avenues
The sweat evaporating from the skin
Remote traffic sounding like gossip

A lone gatekeeper standing by the gate
Adding up thoughts of differences and loss.

Oh Cherry Trees You Are Too White for My Heart

We present this work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Doris Lessing
English
1919 – 2013

 

Oh Cherry trees you are too white for my heart,
And all the ground is whitened with your dying,
And all your boughs go dipping towards the river,
And every drop is falling from my heart.’

Now if there is justice in the angel with the bright eyes
He will say ‘Stop!’ and hand me a bough of cherry.
The bearded angel, four-square and straight like a goat
Lifts a ruminant head and slowly chews at the snow.

Goat, must you stand here?
Must you stand here still?
Is it that you will always stand here,
Proof against faith, proof against innocence?