Male Poets

The Song of Exile

Gonçalves Dias
Brazilian
1823 – 1864

 

My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air;
no bird here can sing as well
as the birds sing over there.

We have fields more full of flowers
and a starrier sky above,
we have woods more full of life
and a life more full of love.

Lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
my homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Such delights as my land offers
Are not found here nor elsewhere;
lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Don’t allow me, God, to die
without getting back to where
I belong, without enjoying
the delights found only there,
without seeing all those palm-trees,
hearing thrush-songs fill the air.

Translation by Nelson Ascher

He Who Would True Valour See

We present this work in honor of Shrove Tuesday.

John Bunyan
English
1628 – 1688

 

Who would true Valour see
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once Relent,
His first avow’d Intent,
To be a Pilgrim.

Who so beset him round,
With dismal Storys,
Do but themselves Confound;
His Strength the more is.
No Lyon can him fright,
He’l with a Gyant Fight,
But he will have a right,
To be a Pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul Fiend,
Can daunt his Spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall Life Inherit.
Then Fancies fly away,
He’l fear not what men say,
He’l labour Night and Day,
To be a Pilgrim.

Lovers

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

Jorge Gaitán Durán
Colombian
1924 – 1962

 

We are like those that love each other.
When undressing we discover two monstrous
strangers who hug themselves gropingly,
scars with which the hateful desire
indicates those that restlessly love each other:
the boredom, the suspicion that invincibly ties us
to its network, like in the sin of two adulterous gods.
Enamored like two insane ones,
two bloodthirsty stars, two dynasties
that with hunger dispute a kingdom,
we want to be justice, we stalk ourselves ferociously,
we trick ourselves, we infer the vile insults
with which the sky affronts those that love each other.
Just to set us afire a thousand times
the embrace in the world are those that love each other
A thousand times we die each day.

Translation by Dina Moscovici

I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 415th birthday.

Sir John Suckling
English
1609 – 1641

 

I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine;
For if from yours you will not part,
Why then shouldst thou have mine?

Yet now I think on’t, let it lie,
To find it were in vain;
For th’hast a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together?
O love, where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever?

But love is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out;
For when I think I’m best resolv’d,
I then am most in doubt.

Then farewell care, and farewell woe,
I will no longer pine;
For I’ll believe I have her heart
As much as she hath mine.

The White Stallion

We present this work in honor of Isra and Mi’raj.

Abus Salt
Arab Andalusian
1067 – 1134

 

Pale as the morning star
in the hour of sunrise

he advances proudly,
caparisoned with a saddle of gold.

One who saw him going with me
into battle, envied me and said:

“Who bridled Dawn with the Pleiades?
Who saddled lightning with the half moon?”

Translation by Cola Franzen

To Hidalgo

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

Fernando Calderon
Mexican
1809 – 1845

 

Plunged into the silence of the grave,
Were found the Mexican people:
Fatal silence interrupted only
By the chains they dragged.

The last groan of the unhappy slave
Was punished as if it had been an atrocious crime,
Or it resounded in the ears of the
Oppressors as if it were triumphal music.

Hidalgo cried at last with voice divine:
“Freedom to Mexico, and forever!”
And hurled war at the Spanish tyrant.

Eleven years the mortal conflict lasted;
The throne crumbled, and in its ruins
Floats the standard of liberty.

Translation by Ernest S. Green and H. Von Lowenfels

Redondilla VIII

We present this work in honor of the 400th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Vicente Espinel
Spanish
1550 – 1624

 

The tired thought
of the importunate pain
look for the best state
(if in love there is good condition).
That a chest so hurt
nor does glory feed him,
nor does the pain torment him,
how high the memory,
nor does he feel pain, nor glory,
neither good nor evil sustains him.

To the Historic Genízaro Tree

We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Alfonso Cortés
Nicaraguan
1903 – 1969

 

I love you, old tree, because day and night
you generate mysteries and fate
in the voices of evening wind
or birds at dawn.

You adorn the main square
and your thoughts are more divine
than human ideas as you point us toward roads
with proud branches full of sound.

Jenísaro, all your old scars
are inscribed in your folios
the way time falls and keeps falling.
But your fresh and joyous leaves
sway in the highest reaches of infinity,
while humanity makes its way ahead.

Translation by Steven F. White

Burgersfort Landfill

Vonani Bila
South African
b. 1972

 

Vultures dwell here
Among the grim faced shack dwellers
With their famished children

When the waste delivery truck arrives
The dark human vultures shove and shuffle
Fighting over dirt
Competing with rats and pigs

No one talks about this grim enterprise
The vultures hope to turn rags to riches
In this, our wasted market economy

When ministers talk of black empowerment
No one mentions this grim enterprise
Which tries in vain to turn rags to riches

But on election day –
The vultures are fed with pap and beef stew
Dressed in a clean T-shirt with the leader’s face

And when darkness falls
The vultures jadedly retire to the dump
A celestial graveyard of hopes – their home