Your Last Life

This is your last life, so what you don’t agree? –
Born to move belongings, hug friends at the gate,
To buy some ibuprofen in duty free,
To nod at giggling Koreans, notice their traits.
This is your last body, a sound one-seat frame
Waiting in lounge to board for the hut above
Wait a little, baby, thirty-or-so lame
Years and you’ll sit to laugh with Him who you love.

If you regret then only that you’ve seen
You grasp eternal truth hard and belated.
My new fringe does filter the world as a screen
Therefore it becomes a little less-hated.

Sit down and taste everything new that glistens.
If there’s anything you can’t see from the ground –
Research from above. There’s a load not yet found
In last youth, this tough coordinate system.

Dance in your poems, with heels flick in a fling.
A party? No sleep for neighbors and friends hang
Here. And you are so beautiful with your bangs –
Geez, some idiot gets lucky this spring.

Translation by Olga Tsvetkova

Liège, 1914

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.

Isobel Wylie Hutchison
Scots
1889 – 1982

Over the wheatfields the sky was shot with light
And there was one large star.
The Pentland Hills were full of purple night.
I heard afar
The rush of a motor car,
And as I passed by the hedge the corn leaned out
Wind-impelled, and touched my hand about,
Then withdrew.

I knew
The star as my own
And the fields full-grown;
I looked at the wheat and said
‘At Liège the gold is red,
And to-night how still the dead must lie
With their faces stark to the open sky
Or dreadfully earthward turned.’
Over the corn the wind mourned.
I looked at the star and cried,
‘Of Heaven the doors are very wide,
And God has hung a little light
For stragglers who fall in to-night.’

A Reminiscence

We present this work in honor of the 175th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Yes, thou art gone! and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee,
May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that, frozen, lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.
Yet, though I cannot see thee more,
‘Tis still a comfort to have seen;
And though thy transient life is o’er,
‘Tis sweet to think that thou hast been;
To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

The House of Rest

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 205th birthday.

I will build a house of rest,
Square the corners every one:
At each angle on his breast
Shall a cherub take the sun;
Rising, risen, sinking, down,
Weaving day’s unequal crown.

In the chambers, light as air,
Shall responsive footsteps fall:
Brother, sister, art thou there?
Hush! we need not jar nor call;
Need not turn to seek the face
Shut in rapture’s hiding-place.

Heavy load and mocking care
Shall from back and bosom part;
Thought shall reach the thrill of prayer,
Patience plan the dome of art.
None shall praise or merit claim,
Not a joy be called by name.

With a free, unmeasured tread
Shall we pace the cloisters through:
Rest, enfranchised, like the Dead;
Rest till Love be born anew.
Weary Thought shall take his time,
Free of task-work, loosed from rhyme.

No reproof shall grieve or chill;
Every sin doth stand confest;
None need murmur, ‘This was ill’:
Therefore do they grant us rest;
Contemplation making whole
Every ruin of the soul.

Pictures shall as softly look
As in distance shows delight;
Slowly shall each saintly book
Turn its pages in our sight;
Not the study’s wealth confuse,
Urging zeal to pale abuse.

Children through the windows peep,
Not reproachful, though our own;
Hushed the parent passion deep,
And the household’s eager tone.
One above, divine and true,
Makes us children like to you.

Measured bread shall build us up
At the hospitable board;
In Contentment’s golden cup
Is the guileless liquor poured.
May the beggar pledge the king
In that spirit gathering,

Oh! my house is far away;
Yet it sometimes shuts me in.
Imperfection mars each day
While the perfect works begin.
In the house of labor best
Can I build the house of rest.

Christ Has No Body

We present this work in honor of Trinity Sunday.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

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

The Rose is In the Body

In honor of the Commemoration of Ataturk, we present this work by one of modern Turkey’s fiercest poets.

when the angels bow down before the roses
with a force equal to that of the wave
the rose is in the body

pulling the stars out of dark nests
down into the deeps, the beds of moonlight
the voices that announce her,
the crimson within pain and faith-filled nights.

in everthing within everything
within no place in nothing
your heart an unheard and solitary collision
down in the depths of the ocean
but burning a thousand times carries the rooted fires
under skies where you
desired everything, where you thirsted.

whatever it is you craved to hear, or the hunger
dragging on from that first day craved to eat
is there, where the angels bow down;
and the rose is in the body.

Translation by Patrick Neil Doherty

If I Were Only Sure

If I were only sure
I could live as long as I wanted to,
I would not have to weep
at parting from you.

Translation by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi

How to Pray While the World Burns

We present this work in honor of Yom Ha-atzmaut.

Go outside.
Find a patch of grass, sand, dirt.
Sit, kneel, place a hand or just
A finger to the soft earth.
Feel it pulse back.

Open your palms and divine
The words creased between.
Rub the specks of dirt
Between your fingers,
See how they cling to skin,
How they listen in their soft-rough way.

The earth will hold you better
Than God can.
God could not stop the bullets
Or the sale of weapons.
God could not block the open
Synagogue doors.

But we keep saying, Shema,
Listen.
Israel.
Our God is One.
Singular.
Invisible.
Hiding in plain sight.

But listen, Israel, our God is beneath
Our feet, between
Our fingers, coursing
Through our veins.

Our God is trapped
In the poisoned grass,
Where the blood of our brothers cries out,
Where the ants heave centuries on their backs.

Pray to the God who sharpened the tiger’s teeth,
Who stored the roar in its throat.
Pray to the God who gave you lungs and tongue
To sing and groan and hum.

I swear to you
When the leaf shivers in the wind
You have given it chills
From all its listening.

The earth hears your prayer.
There is nowhere for God to hide.
Get down on your knees and let
This precious earth soften for the weight of you.

You are held.
You are heard.
The wind pulls its blanket over your back,
Smooths the hair from your face,
Touches your cheek
With its cool, trembling hands.

The Charm of Spring

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

I passed in a garden
with the gaits of the wind.
I saw the owner of garden
with the art of love
in the look of a rose.
The branches of all the
trees were ornamented with
the blossom of the apple.
Bravo, the art of the charm
of the spring. The green
velvet of the grass has
spread its skirt for seeing
the munificence in the
hearts of my companions.
Flowing with the joy, a pond
in the garden took the fishes
that song the love melodies to
the abode of dream. Bravo, the
art of the charm of the spring.

I heard the joy of love in
the clamour of hundred
swallows. Then I saw the
feast of the trees that had
the branches ornamented
with the blossoms of love.
They song together the
melody of unity: bravo
the art of the charm of
the spring.

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