East winds that melt the mountain snow
Come and go, without words.
Blow over my head, young breeze,
Even for a moment, blow.
Would you could blow away the gray hairs
That grow so fast around my ears!
Sticks in one hand,
Branches in another:
I try to block old age with bushes,
And frosty hair with sticks:
But white hair came by a short cut,
Having seen through my devices.
We present this work in honor of the 10th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Who are they and who are we?
They are the princes and the Sultans
They are the ones with wealth and power
And we are the impoverished and deprived
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is governing whom?
Who are they and who are we?
We are the constructing, we are the workers
We are Al-Sunna, We are Al-Fard
We are the people both height and breadth
From our health, the land raises
And by our sweat, the meadows turn green
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who serves whom?
Who are they and who are we?
They are the princes and the Sultans
They are the mansions and the cars
And the selected women
Consumerist animals
Their job is only to stuff their guts
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is eating whom?
Who are they and who are we?
We are the war, its stones and fire
We are the army liberating the land
We are the martyrs
Defeated or successful
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is killing whom?
Who are they and who are we?
They are the princes and the Sultans
They are mere images behind the music
They are the men of politics
Naturally, with blank brains
But with colorful decorative images
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is betraying whom?
Who are they and who are we?
They are the princes and the Sultans
They wear the latest fashions
But we live seven in a single room
They eat beef and chicken
And we eat nothing but beans
They walk around in private planes
We get crammed in buses
Their lives are nice and flowery
They’re one specie; we are another
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who will defeat whom?
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Vibrating cicada: with your lyrical efforts
summers you sang in the blue distance,
and at the trembling of your resonant wings, it shone
all the sun in my eyes and in the smiling valley.
And you were silent when you saw me on the edge of the pampas
wander, when the dying ray of the day,
with the blonde palm trees that the afternoon swayed
I had loves, and the plain taught me dreams.
Today when languid mists dressed the prairie,
My soul awaits something without knowing what it awaits:
May the sun shine, may you return and soar in the light!
Not even a cloud over the eternal wasteland…
Since you no longer sing, winter has come
and the mute mists turn the mountains gray.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 400th birthday.
We are desire hidden in the love-crazed call of the nightingale
We are blood hidden in the crimson heart of the unbloomed rose
We are pouring pearl-tears over the thinness of our lovesick bodies
We are hidden, like the divine strand that pierces the jewel’s heart
So what if we are famous for having no worldly fame?
We are hidden, like the heart, in the strange mystery of life’s riddle
The east wind is the only confidante for our every condition
We are always hidden in the disheveled twist of the beloved’s curl
Like the rose, the color of our essence is obviously bright
But we are hidden in the joy of the wine-cup’s subtle way
Sometimes we are like the reed pen that illuminates the plaints of love
Sometimes like the lament hidden in the pen as it writes
Oh Neşâtî, we are ever abandoning the visible presence of our selves
We are hidden in the absolute brilliance of the perfect mirror
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.
By and by Man will try
To get out into the sky,
Sailing far beyond the air
From Down and Here to Up and There.
Stars and sky, sky and stars
Make us feel the prison bars.
Suppose it done. Now we ride
Closed in steel, up there, outside
Through our port-holes see the vast
Heaven-scape go rushing past.
Shall we? All that meets the eye
Is sky and stars, stars and sky.
Points of light with black between
Hang like a painted scene
Motionless, no nearer there
Than on Earth, everywhere
Equidistant from our ship.
Heaven has given us the slip.
Hush, be still. Outer space
Is a concept, not a place.
Try no more. Where we are
Never can be sky or star.
From prison, in a prison, we fly;
There’s no way into the sky.
You are so forgetful! Yesterday you left behind
here, over the piano that you no longer play,
a bit of your ailing girl soul:
a book, forbidden, of tender memories.
Intimate memories. I opened it, carelessly,
And knew, smiling, your deepest woe,
The sweet secret that I will not tell:
That you mention me no one wants to know.
…Come, take the book, you faraway, full
of light and daydreams. Crazy romantic…
Leaving all your loves here, over the piano!…
You are so forgetful, absent-minded!
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Who could fall asleep, as a child falls asleep;
smile between dreams to the dream of pain;
and dream of friends and dream of affection;
and slowly sink into a greater dream.
And walk through life sleepwalking,
eyes wide open on an inner world,
with sealed lips, eternally mute,
attentive only to the rhythm of your own heart…
And go through life without leaving a trace…
To be the poor stream that evaporates in the sun…
and lose one night, as a star dies,
that burned thousands of years, and that nobody saw it…
We present this work in honor of the 145th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I have outlived most things and people round me
and weighed the worth of most things in this life;
these days I drag along though bars surround me,
exist within set limits without strife.
Horizons now for me are close and dreary
and day by day draw nearer and more dark.
Reflection’s dipping flight is slow and weary,
my soul’s small world is desolate and stark.
My mind no longer casts ahead with boldness,
the voice of hope is dumb — and on the route,
now trampled flat by living’s mundane coldness,
I am denied the chance to set my foot.
And if my life has seemed among the hardest
and though my storeroom’s stock of grain is small,
what sense is there in hoping still for harvest
when snow from winter clouds begins to fall?
In furrows cropped by scythe or sickle clearance
there may be found, it’s true, some living trace;
in me there may be found some past experience,
but nothing of tomorrow’s time or space.
Life’s balanced the accounts, she is unable
to render back what has been prised away
and what the earth, in sounding vaults of marble,
has closed off, pitiless, from light of day.
On the hard road of life and death
That is near our land,
You went, afraid,
Without words.
We know not where we go,
Leaves blown, scattered,
Though fallen from the same tree,
By the first winds of autumn.
Ah, I will polish the path
Until I meet you in the Pure Land
In honor of Morocco’s Independence Day, we present this Moroccan classic.
I passed by a beautiful tomb in the middle of a cemetery
on which flowers had formed a carpet
so I asked whose grave this was.
And I was told, “Pray for him respectfully—it is the grave of a lover.”
Poets Corner 