Hard times, Sea that hides its secrets, Harbinger of the visionary. Cast your pretensions aside And take your measures.
You, who believed That in wounding others, you would be saved, And that misfortune would only come to others, This time, evil has spared you. Above all, don’t fool yourself where you shouldn’t.
Reason before unleashing your words: All questions engender a response. Never does a claimed right die When there are men behind it, Even if it appears farther than sun and moon.
You who evoke only in mocking The weaknesses of others, The day will come when yours will be displayed. You who make evil the reason of life, Don’t forget that you bathe in absolute shame.
You, Sedentary without a home, That riches that surround you will one day go up in smoke. Very slowly the coming days will diminish your life, Like wine dismantles reason.
It’s time to leave, The caravan’s moving, and the horsemen as well, And you are doing nothing for this voyage, Too sure, you don’t really know what awaits you, The days to come will scarcely give you reason.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.
Napoleon Lapathiotis Greek 1888 – 1944
Autumn, I loved you when the leaves fall And leave the branches naked for winter’s icy bites, When the evenings flee, the poms are apple red, And lonely are the nights…
And stand I now and ask: what fate and what storm, While alone sailing the abysmal depths of mort, Strangely and hopelessly has brought me now forlorn A beggar in your court…
And when the dinner ends and night falls, And quietly, like books, the light dies in the sky I come back looking for my lost peace of old, Like a charity from up high…
I loved you fall, when the leaves fall and Leave the branches, and lonely is each night. But did I really love you – or is just the shiver Of the coming winter’s icy bite…
Cursed! be the father of the bride of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe with which the woodsman hacked down the oak from which the bed was carved in which was conceived the great-grandfather of the man who was driving the carriage in which your mother met your father.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
Jayanta Mahapatra Indian 1928 – 2023
Of that love, of that mile walked together in the rain, only a weariness remains.
I am that stranger now my mirror holds to me; the moment’s silence hardly moves across the glass. I pity myself in another’s guise.
And no one’s back here, no one I can recognize, and from my side I see nothing. Years have passed since I sat with you, watching the sky grow lonelier with cloudlessness, waiting for your body to make it lived in.
We present this work in honor of the 130th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Julián del Casal Cuban 1863 – 1893
More than a mother as a saint to me You were in truth. You gave me birth and died, But Oh! my mother when you left my side God kissed an angel in eternity. Today when in my dreams methinks I see Your smiling face, I gaze on you with pride, And sigh, sweet mother, as I oft have sighed, While tears I shed when I remember thee. And should we never, never meet again How sad ‘twould by, but I shall always keep Your image in my heart, and not complain; For something tells me that you lie asleep Because my suff’ring would have caused you pain— Because my weeping would have made you weep.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.
Guilldermo Valencia Colombian 1873 – 1943
That I love you, without rival, you knew it and the Lord knows it; never flirt the erratic grass to the friendly forest how your being joined my sad soul
And in my memory your life persists with the sweet murmur of a song already the nostalgia of your love mitigates my mourning that resists oblivion.
Diaphanous spring that does not run out, you live in me and in my austere aridity your freshness mixes drop by drop.
You went to my desert the palm tree, To my bitter skin the seagull, And you will only die when I die!
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.
Les Murray Australian 1938 – 2019
The word goes round Repins, the murmur goes round Lorenzinis, at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers, the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club: There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him.
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing: There’s a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.
The man we surround, the man no one approaches simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps not like a child, not like the wind, like a man and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping
holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow, and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds longing for tears as children for a rainbow.
Some will say, in the years to come, a halo or force stood around him. There is no such thing. Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood, the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us
trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children and such as look out of Paradise come near him and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.
Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit— and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand and shake as she receives the gift of weeping; as many as follow her also receive it
and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance, but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing, the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out of his writhen face and ordinary body
not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow, hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea— and when he stops, he simply walks between us mopping his face with the dignity of one man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.
Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.
We present this work in honor of the Jamaican holiday, National Heroes’ Day.
Roger Mais Jamaican 1905 – 1955
Men of ideas outlive their times An idea held by such a man does not end with his death His life bleeding away goes down Into the earth, and they grow like seed The idea that is not lost with the waste of a single life Like seed springing up a multitude.
They hanged Gordon from a boom Rigged in front of the Court House They hanged him with eighteen others for company And Jesus had but two But the ideas for which Gordon lived Did not hang with him And the great social revolution for which Jesus died Did not die with him Two men they nailed with Jesus side by side Eighteen went to hang with Gordon from the new-rigged boom But the idea of equality and justice with Gordon Went into the ground and sprung up like seed, a multitude
A hundred years the seed was a-growing in the ground A hundred years is not too long A hundred years is not too soon A hundred years is a time and a season And all things must wait a time and a season And the time and the season for each growing thing
Is the way, and there is no other
The time and the season of its growing and bearing fruit
Are inherent in the nature of the seed And inherent in it is its growth and its fruit
And this is the way and there is no other
A hundred years is not too long
For the seed to burst its husk under the ground
And cleave a path and press upward
And thrust a green blade in triumph at the sun Do not be anxious for the house that is a-building For the unsown acres under the plough For all things await a time and a season.
The dream given to one man in the night
Not night nor darkness can call it back again
They hanged George William Gordon for the dream
He had been given in the night That he carried in his breast Thinking to put the dream to death With the man they put to shameful death But they give immortality to the dream That time the man is put to death For the dream is all It is all of a man that there is and immortal And all of immortality of a man there is.
A long time ago they hanged George William Gordon But not so long ago A log time ago They put Jesus on the Cross But not so long For all things have a time and a season A long time ago The pea doves took the sweetwood seeds And let them fall on the valley bottoms That are now the virgin forest of the great backlands Of new timber, a long time Were the bare rock-spure growing That is now a matted forest floor Where the wild birds took and dropped The little sweet kernels of the tall timbers A long time ago, but not so long For all things have a time and a season And a hundred years is not too long And a hundred years is not too soon. They hanged Gordon with eighteen others They nailed Jesus between two thieves But the ideas these men lived for did not die with them A single grain of corn will yield an ear of corn And an ear of corn in two generations will sow a field And these things befall between a moon and a moon All things await a time and a season And twice a hundred years is not too long Or twice a hundred years too soon.
We present this work in honor of the 405th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Heo Gyun Korean 1569 – 1618
As the sun is about to set, An old woman is wailing in the ruins of a village. Her disheveled hair looks as if blighted by frost, And her eyes are shadowed as if by dusk. Her husband is in a cold jail cell, Because he cannot pay off the money he owes, And her son has gone off with the royal army. Her house has been burned down to the base of the pillars; Hiding out in the woods she has lost even her hemp petticoat. She has no work, she has no wish even to go on living, Why is the petty clerk of the district calling for her at the gate?
Before you, my mother Idoto, Naked I stand; Before your weary presence, A prodigal Leaning on an oilbean, Lost in your legend Under your power wait I On barefoot, Watchman for the watchword At Heavensgate; Out of the depth my cry: Give ear and hearken… DARK WATERS of the beginning. Ray, violet, and short, piercing the gloom, Foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of. Rainbow on far side, arched like boa bent to kill, Foreshadow the fire that is dreamed of. Me to the orangery Solitude invites, A wagtail, to tell The tangled-wood-tale; A sunbird, to mourn A mother on spray. Rain and sun in single combat; On one leg standing, In silence at the passage The young bird at the passage SILENCE FACES at crossroads: Festivity in black… Faces of black like black Column of ants, Behind the bell tower, Into the hot garden Where all roads meet: Festivity in black… O Anan at the knob of the panel oblong, Hear us at crossroads at the great hinges Where the players of loft organ Rehearse old lovely fragment, alone- Strains of pressed orange leaves on pages Bleach of the light of years held in leather: For we are listening in cornfields Among the wind players, Listening to the wind leaning over Its loveliest fragment…
Poets Corner 