We present this work in honor of Green March Day.
The Prophet, who dwells in the Garden’s summit,
Most deserving of God’s praise and glory,
Experienced, worthy to guide God’s servants,
The beloved, who knows the secrets of hearts
Leads the messengers from beginning to end
The beautiful dhikr begins and ends on him.
From the signs of the messengers they were ahead.
The most brilliant are those from our Messenger.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 265th birthday.
Your evening is full of coolness—
The shore is moving in crowds
Like a magical serenade
The voice is carried by the wave
Reveal the goddess of grace
Seeing enthusiastic piit.
That spends sleepless nights
Leaning on granite.
We present this work in honor of National Unity Day.
on the birthday of her majesty, the sovereign empress Elisaveta Petrovna, autocrat of all Russia, in the year 1746
This very day, most blessèd Russia,
A pleasing land in heaven’s eyes,
This very day from holy heights
Elisaveta’s given thee.
To raise our Peter posthumously,
To crush our foes’ o’erweening pride
And cast them also into horror,
To make thee safe from dire misfortunes,
To place thee judge above the kingdoms
And elevate thee o’er the clouds.
Oh child of Him who thunders above us,
Mother of all the tribes of earth,
Oh Nature, marvelous in actions,
As if you judge me to be worthy
To know the deepest of your secrets,
And if the weak engine of thoughts
May penetrate into your mansions,
Present to me that fateful epoch
And the stars’ whole course in order,
As He most high gave us this token.
Through stormy clouds of former sadness,
Which cruèl fate brought unto us,
Oh, how the mountains wept for Peter
And Pontus roared within its banks,
Through changes dreadful for the Rossians,
Through the dust that wars disturbed,
I see that bright and radiant moment:
There ’round the young Elisaveta
Shine planets bearing happy fate,
I hear the voice of Nature present.
How clear the sun when that first time
Upon you shone its gleaming ray,
Already fortune stretched her hand
With love for all your pleasant ways,
She held the crown above your head
And elevated there before you
The trophies of your fathers’ conquests,
Most glorious to the ends of earth.
How fortunate was Russia then
When first upon the world you gazed!
Then from Poltava, filled with gladness,
The sound of Rossian vict’ry roared,
Then all the universe’s limits
Could not contain the fame of Peter,
Then the heads of vanquished vandals
Bowed low as they were herded past,
E’en when you were in swaddling clothes;
Then it was that fate made known,
The regiments of their descendants
Would fall before you tremorously.
But lo, the various tongues and peoples
From the great rivers and the seas
Lift up harmonious exclamations,
To you, their monarch and their lady,
They spread out wide their hearts and hands,
And many a time do they repeat:
“Long live the great Elisaveta,
Born on this day for Rossian glory,
And may the heavens fortify her
Through multitudes of happy years.”
We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Culture Day.
We may realize
that people are merely dreams:
the house abandoned,
its wild garden becomes home
to a swarm of butterflies.
Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks
in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses,
satellite station green rooms, or conked
out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels,
there you were, with muck-about kisses,
sharking for the snappers, before hell
opened up for you and weeping sores
of after fame appeared, the haphazardry
and dwindling after three limelit years,
recognized with catcalls, wads of spit,
a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie
melts fast, like your flat on Air Street,
the Lhasa Apso pups, the wraps and lines
of chang, the poster pull-outs, fake tan
smiles. It’s paunch and palimony time
on Lucifer’s leash. But for a madcap few
who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain
is simmering with hatred, just for you.
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
I.
I will start to live in each rose
And in each lily that your eyes will see
And in every bird trill I’ll sing your name
So that you‘ll never forget me.
II.
If you cry as you contemplate the stars
And your soul fills with impossibilities,
It’s because my loneliness has come to kiss you
So that you’ll never forget me.
III.
I will paint a rose colored horizon
And I will paint blue wallflowers
And I will guild the moon on your hair
So that you’ll never forget me.
IV.
If asleep you sweetly walk
Through a world of diaphanous gardens,
Think of my heart that dreams of you,
So that you’ll never forget me.
V.
And if some evening, at a far away altar,
You hold another’s hand, and you are blessed,
When the golden ring is placed on your finger,
My soul will be an invisible tear
In the eyes of the moribund Christ
So that you’ll never forget me!
We present this honor of Halloween.
A fair witch crept to a young man’s side,
And he kiss’d her and took her for his bride.
But a Shape came in at the dead of night,
And fill’d the room with snowy light.
And he saw how in his arms there lay
A thing more frightful than mouth may say.
And he rose in haste, and follow’d the Shape
Till morning crown’d an eastern cape.
And he girded himself, and follow’d still
When sunset sainted the western hill.
But, mocking and thwarting, clung to his side,
Weary day!—the foul Witch-Bride.
We present this work in honor of Chhath Puja
.
My soul cries out,
Snared by the beauty
Of the formless one.
As I cry by myself,
Night and day,
Beauty amassed before my eyes
Surpasses numberless moons and suns.
If I look at the clouds in the sky,
I see his beauty afloat;
And I see him walk on the stars
Blazing my heart
We present this work in honor of the Turkish holiday, Republic Day.
The great Itri has of old been called
The Patron of our music;
How he leads the people far and near,
That conqueror of the day-break,
On how many holiday mornings early
Rattling the heavens with their voices massed together,
Have they chanted the magnificent Tekbir.
From Budapest to Iraq, even unto Egypt,
From the furthest conquered lands,
The breeze free-flowing o’er the homeland,
Brought with it sound from every blossoming spring.
This man of genius collected them
So that from the plane trees he heard us,
Heard our tale of seven centuries.
In his music flowed on one hand Faith,
On the other, all of Life;
From every side that brightness of the city, the Bosphorus
Flowed with the blue Tunca, and proud Euphrates.
With what voices, with our sky and earth,
With our sadness, our passion, our victories,
Flowed that creation, which resembled us.
How many times have I listened to the Neva-Kâr,
A refrain which is both broad and lively:
While scattering the secrets of the mode Neva,
Brightness shines from the horizons of the Orient;
Drunk with every syllable of his words,
By night, one by one they set out,
Toward the dawn go fifty million souls.
But Chance and Fortune enviously
Have hidden more than a thousand of his works,
As his inheritance there remain to us but twenty.
His Hymn to the Prophet, most awesome and profound,
Then appear the flute and kettle-drum,
And while the turning of the dervishes grows wilder,
His liturgy ascends the seven-tiered Celestial Throne.
He who was the master of a splendid world
Of voice and string,
Remains to us a mystery.
Our learned men know not, who was he?
Who hides his works today?
Are they a treasure kept by Eternity?
Does someone know? Where might they be today?
Death, which covers up such music
Leaves no consolation to mankind.
My heart still is blind
As in exile it passes many hours,
It falls into a pleasant revery:
Perhaps those compositions are yet played,
On an Ocean which never ship shall pass.
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Tell me friend,
What is knowledge?
I dress up nicely,
I carry a cane,
I get on the road,
I eat well?
Tell me my peer,
What is knowledge?
Is it going to school,
Reading the book
Until I am bald,
Turning over pages?
Tell me mother,
What is knowledge?
Is it to be a speaker,
Be applauded by the whole world,
Interpreting the laws
Without understanding?
Tell my father,
What is knowledge?
Come my boy,
Let me pull your ears:
“Talk a little
Do bigger.”
Poets Corner 