In honor of Muharram, we present this work by one of Islam’s great medieval poets.
Look at the beautiful sun:
as it rises, it shows one golden eyebrow,
plays miser with the other one,
but we know that soon
it will spread out a radiant veil
over all.
A marvelous mirror that appears in the East
only to hide again at dusk.
The sky is saddened
when the sun leaves
and puts on mourning robes.
I believe that falling stars
are nothing more
than sky’s gem-hard tears.
They said: Your sweetheart has been bitten!
I said: By the scorpion of his temple-curl
or the snake of his hair?
No, they said, by the vipers of the earth!
Oh but how, I replied, could the earthly vipers
have ascended to the moon?
The guillotine is the masterpiece of plastic art
Its click
Creates perpetual motion
Everyone knows about Christopher Columbus’ egg
Which was a flat egg, a fixed egg, the egg of an inventor
Archipenko’s sculpture is the first ovoidal egg
Held in intense equilibrium
Like an immobile top
On its animated point
Speed
It throws off
Multicolored waves
Color zones
And turns in depth
Nude.
New.
Total.
Insects and dust. A leaden atmosphere
Where loud the clappings of the thunder sound.
Like swans in mud, pure white against a ground
Of ashes, clouds immaculate appear.
The sea has paralyzed its waves, their clear
Green rush is still; above that bosom round
Lightning, within a frame of peace profound,
Lets forth a swift and sudden crimson spear.
Dreamily nods the lazy tree its head;
Deep calm, unbalanced, reels before attack,
And rapid sea gulls rend the air amain.
Across the spacious vault a bolt is sped,
And then upon the earth’s great smoking back
Sharply descend the crackling drops of rain.
In honor of the Canadian holiday, Civic Day, we present this work by one of Canada’s most heartfelt poets.
She was a massive ship, hewn in heavy gold,
with masts that fingered heaven on seas unknown.
Under redundant sun, with scattered hair,
was prowed outspread Venus, bare;
but then one night she hit the huge reef
in waters where the Sirens sing,
and this ghastly shipwreck tilted its keel
to the depths of the chasm, that immutable
tomb. She was a ship of gold, but her diaphanous
flanks showed treasures over which the blasphemous
sailors Psychosis, Spite and Nausea clashed.
So, what has survived this flash of storm?
What about my heart, abandoned ship?
…O, still it sinks, deep in Dream’s abyss.
We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Over the wide cold leaves of time you arrive, stained
by the fleeting sun of the rainy seasons on the plains.
You come lukewarm in color and shivering, and my heart
feels the bliss, holds it, from a word
unspoken, and the murmuring steps on the grass cover
the ennui, the glow,
of an essence withheld, drowned and remote.
You gather a robe around you—proper, singular—,
folding it around you
around you, curved to fit the bone.
How much of the soul, what depths of the soul you want
to enter you, to touch you lightly in passing! Yes:
even as air
enters the mouth, claustral and flaring.
You go with the ocean tides and the watery brilliance of
the slow, final skies, which go
veiled toward the south where the great red bustard flies
and nests, and the night
turns back and calls full of anguish under the flowering
darknesses,
nostalgic and scattered.
We present this work in honor of the 250th anniversary of the poet’s death.
T’was on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she gazed; but ‘midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.
The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A favorite has no friend!
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
In honor of Revolution Day, we present this work by one of today’s most evocative Egyptian poets.
There are hours when every thing creaks
when chairs stretch their arms, tables their legs
and closets crack their backs, incautiously
Fed up with the polite fantasy
of having to stay in one place
and stick to their stations
Humans too, at work, or in love
know such aches and growing pains
when inner furnishings defiantly shift
As decisively, and imperceptibly, as a continent
some thing will stretch, croak or come undone
so that everything else must be reconsidered
One restless dawn, unable to suppress the itch
of wanderlust, with a heavy door left ajar
semi-deliberately, and a new light teasing in
Some piece of immobility will finally quit
suddenly nimble on wooden limbs
as fast as a horse, fleeing the stable.
We present this work in honor of the 225th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ye banks and braes o’ bonie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu’ o’ care!
Thou’ll break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn:
Thou minds me o’ departed joys,
Departed never to return.
Aft hae I rov’d by Bonie Doon,
To see the rose and woodbine twine:
And ilka bird sang o’ its Luve,
And fondly sae did I o’ mine;
Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose,
Fu’ sweet upon its thorny tree!
And may fause Luver staw my rose,
But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.
Poets Corner 