In honor of the Ching Ming Festival, we present this work by one of the great poets of ancient China.
Bao Junhui Chinese 798 – ?
Risen high — the moon of fall
Glows north on a Liaoyang barricade
The border is far — the moon gleams farther
Ice-bows flash as winds invade
Soldiers gaze back — home beats at the heart
And war-steeds balk at the beat of a drum
The north wind grieves in the frontier grass
And barbarous sands hide hordes to come
Frost freezes the swordblade into the sheath
Wind wears their banner to bits on the plain
Oh someday— someday —to bow near the palace
And never hear camp-gongs clang again
In honor of Malvinas Day, we present this work by one of the finest poets of 20th century Argentina.
Maria Luisa Carnelli Argentine 1898 – 1987
The bandoneón wept
sorrows that the fall of night
takes away.
And just like a heart,
the hollow hallway
picks up a sad, faithful
woman’s prayer.
The milonga cried
over its old passion,
it seems to be begging
comfort and forgiveness.
The shadow went
through the arrabal
of he, whose dagger
played with death.
Two old people
together in an alley
raise their hands
to their salvation.
And all the suburb,
with grief,
evokes a deep
love drama.
The military call
with its prolongued tremble
shook the arrabal.
With great sorrow and feeling,
sentimental pain
overcomes the woman
as the bandoneon
prays of a love.
In honor of Greek Independence Day, we present this work by one of modern Greece’s finest poets.
Melissanthi Greek 1910 – 1991
I take my diving suit and drift around
in the aquarium of the city.
Its streets all teem with divers of murky waters:
bodies of the drowned that sway,
hooked onto fishing lines
hinder the traffic.
Avid eyes lie in wait,
lie in ambush at ev’ry step:
merchandise cheap, sordid bait,
and the prey is trapped with ease.
At the central crossings
the concentration of plankton
is pushed towards the gaping entrances
of supermarkets.
The gaping mouths of voracious cetaceans
washed up in crucial areas of the capital:
enormous mammals which regurgitate
the incoming and outgoing shoal.
In the rush hour the tidal wave is swelling
the continuous perpetual tumult
from the insatiable appetite
of the crowd:
The menace which grows,
the cracked and empty jar,
the invisible black hole
which gulps down the galaxy
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 205th birthday.
La Avellaneda Cuban 1814 – 1873
There are no ties to bind us now; all ties are broken:
I asked that Heaven make it so; thanks be to God!
A bitter cup once filled with pleasure, is now empty;
My soul, at last, can find repose; it desires nothing.
I loved you once, I do not love you now; ponder on that, at least.
If I erred it was because I could not face that truth.
Let all these many years of bitterness and strife
Be swallowed in memory’s void; and let my heart breathe free.
You have battered and destroyed it without pity;
And madly trampled, once and again, my pride …
Yet never from these lips will you hear a murmur
To condemn the tyranny you wielded over me.
Terrible avenger of great wrongs, how meekly
You fulfilled your mission. Are you unaware of it?
It was not your irresistible power that caused me
To lay at your feet my unconquerable strength.
God willed it so; and so it was. Blessed be his name!
All’s over now; and I at last recover my own self.
All-avenging angel, you are now a man! …
And I behold you and feel nor love nor fear.
Your sceptre is shattered and your sword is broken …
And, oh, what melancholy freedom do I breathe!
I made a world of you; that world is gone;
In vast and profound loneliness, I dwell.
I wish you happiness; and if some day you chance
To read this, my eternal farewell, know even then
There will always be in my heart for you,
Generous pardon and tender affection.
In honor of the Indian holiday, Bihar Diwas, we present this work by one of India’s greatest modern poets.
Balamani Amma Indian 1909 – 2004
When I hasten homewards after the morning bath in the river, my path resounds with the song of them that soar in the sky;
There flutter before me the green flags unfurled by those who people the nether regions;
And around me dance the butterflies, swinging their multicoloured robes.
This world, richly adorned, invites me to a glimpse of its magnificent carnival.
But mine eyes are drunk with the beauty of my home, laburnum-garlanded by the all-beholding sun.
When I hurry to my beloved, having quickly gone through the housework, the sun shines more and more in the unclouded heart of sky;
The hidden emotions of darkest depths emerge as burning sighs;
And gold-mohar shrubs, their faces marked with the auspicious saffron beaming with joy, stand by in silence.
The world transforms into a mirror held before me, but I am charmed into gazing at my own feelings reflected in the eyes of my beloved.
When I rush to my children playing in the courtyard, the sky becomes suffused by their milky smile changed into moonlight.
The ripples in the river echo their pattering footsteps;
And all the neighbouring homes are lit up by their untainted grace.
The world turns into a fairyland, wafted out of their enchanting selves.
And my soul is merged in their flower-like forms.
They are my old, dusty roots
The strange code of my captivity;
Tied am I to the dust and its mystery,
I bring strange, unknown essences.
In my pores they are already outlined
The scars of an eternal empire;
The dust has marked its cauterization,
I am a victim of forgotten guilt.
In a dusty form I forsee
And to the new roots I startle
I must bequeath my anguished breath.
Conquering the air by storm,
I have nothing to do with what I feel,
I am an unhappy accomplice to something higher.
In honor of Canberra Day, we offer this widely-loved work of Australian patriotism.
Dorothea MacKellar Australian 1885 – 1968
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze …
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
With the first pale glimmer,
Of the morning red,
Polly woke delighted
And flew out of bed.
To the door she hurried,
Never stopped for clothes,
Though Jack Frost’s cold fingers
Nipt her little toes.
There it hung! the stocking,
Long and blue and full;
Down it quickly tumbled
With a hasty pull.
Back she capered, laughing,
Happy little Polly;
For from out the stocking
Stared a splendid dolly!
Next, what most she wanted,
In a golden nut,
With a shining thimble,
Scissors that would cut;
Then a book all pictures,
“Children in the Wood.”
And some scarlet mittens
Like her scarlet hood.
Next a charming jump-rope,
New and white and strong;
(Little Polly’s stocking
Though small was very long,)
In the heel she fumbled,
“Something soft and warm,”
A rainbow ball of worsted
Which could do no harm.
In the foot came bon-bons,
In the toe a ring,
And some seeds of mignonette
Ready for the spring.
There she sat at daylight
Hugging close dear dolly;
Eating, looking, laughing,
Happy little Polly!
Poets Corner 