In honor of Yom Kippur, we present this work by one of the modern world’s greatest Jewish poets.
Throw your fear
into the air
Soon
your time is over
soon
heaven grows
under the grass
your dreams fall
into nowhere
Still
the carnation smells sweetly
the thrush sings
still you may love
give words away
you are here, still
Be what you are
Give what you have
Early in my days of childhood,
Angels, I oft heard it said,
Left the blissful joys of Heaven
For the light of Earth instead.
When a heart fills with dread sorrow,
Shuns the world and disappears,
When its wish to bleed in silence
Dissolves into a flood of tears,
When its prayer at its most fervent
Begs for nothing but release,
Then the angel will come down to
Raise it up to Heaven’s peace.
Once an angel flew down to me;
He, on wings that shimmer, soft,
Leads me far away from suffering,
Gently bears my soul aloft.
We present this work in honor of the Chung Yeung Festival.
On your slender body
Your jade and coral girdle ornaments chime
Like those of a celestial companion
Come from the Green Jade City of Heaven.
One smile from you when we meet,
And I become speechless and forget every word.
For too long you have gathered flowers,
And leaned against the bamboos,
Your green sleeves growing cold,
In your deserted valley:
I can visualize you all alone,
A girl harboring her cryptic thoughts.
You glow like a perfumed lamp
In the gathering shadows.
We play wine games
And recite each other’s poems.
Then you sing `Remembering South of the River’
With its heart breaking verses. Then
We paint each other’s beautiful eyebrows.
I want to possess you completely –
Your jade body
And your promised heart.
It is Spring.
Vast mists cover the Five Lakes.
My dear, let me buy a red painted boat
And carry you away.
We present this work in honor of Durga Puja.
To the right
of our hill
there’s a shining well
full of water.
Last year
summer covered it
with green mango blossom.
The green tempted
a calf,
which fell in
and drowned.
Since then
people have stopped
drinking from that well.
Now, like a thief,
I bathe in it
at night.
I cup my hands
and drink from it
at night.
But the water
doesn’t quench
my thirst, my desire.
In the dark depths
of the well
there are shadows
still waiting for
the girls
who’d slung a rope
on its hook
but never came back
to draw water.
The well’s darkness
is waiting
for the moment
when I’ll have
the courage
to stretch out my hands
and drink its water
in broad daylight.
In honor of World Teachers’ Day, we present this work that is often studied in American high schools, written by a poet who made his living as a teacher.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Since I from Love escaped am so fat,
I ne’er think to be in his prison ta’en;
Since I am free, I count him not a bean.
He may answer, and saye this and that;
I do no force, I speak right as I mean;
Since I from Love escaped am so fat.
Love hath my name struck out of his slat,
And he is struck out of my bookes clean,
For ever more; there is none other mean;
Since I from Love escaped am so fat.
In honor of German Unity Day, we present this work by one of Germany’s greatest modern writers.
The shoes are at the bottom.
They are afraid of a beetle
On the way out,
Of a penny on the way back,
Of a beetle and a penny on which they might tread
Till it impresses itself.
At the top is the home of the headgear.
Take heed, by wary, not headstrong.
Incredible feathers,
What was the bird called,
Where did its eyes roll
When it knew that its wings were too gaudy?
The white balls asleep in the pockets
Dream of moths.
Here a button is missing,
In this belt the clasp grows weary.
Doleful silk,
Asters and other inflammable flowers,
Autumn becoming a dress.
Every Sunday filled with flesh
And the salt of folded linen.
Before the wardrobe falls silent, turns into wood,
A distant relation of pine-trees,—
Who will wear the coat
One day when you’re dead?
Who move his arm in the sleeve,
Anticipate every movement?
Who will turn up the collar,
Stop in front of the pictures
And be alone under the windy cloche?
We present this work in honor of Gandhi Jayanti.
Awaken them; they are knobs of sound
that seem to melt and crumple up
like some jellyfish of tropical seas,
torn from sleep with a hand lined by prophecies.
Listen hard; their male, gaunt world sprawls the page
like rows of tree trunks reeking in the smoke
of ages, the branches glazed and dead
as though longing to make up with the sky,
but having lost touch with themselves
were unable to find themselves, hold meaning.
And yet, down the steps into the water at Varanasi,
where the lifeless bodies seem to grow human,
the shaggy heads of word-buds move back and forth
between the harsh castanets of the rain
and the noiseless feathers of summer –
aware that their syllables’ overwhelming silence
would not escape the hearers now, and which
must remain that mysterious divine path
guarded by drifts of queer, quivering banyans:
a language of clogs over cobbles, casting
its uncertain spell, trembling sadly into mist.
We present this work in honor of the Chinese holiday, National Day.
Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the sky on the back
of wild geese which call as they fly,
but when we look below at Loyang,
not so clear because of the mist,
everywhere could be seen looting
armies, which took Loyang, creating
chaos and madness with blood
flowing everywhere; like animals of prey
rebel army men made into officials
with caps and robes to match.
In honor of Rosh Hashanah, we present this work by one of the 20th century’s great Jewish poets.
When the day empties itself
In the twilight,
When the imageless time begins,
The lonely voices join together—
The animals are nothing other than the hunting
Or the hunted—
The flowers no more than fragrance—
When everything becomes nameless as in the beginning—
You go under the catacombs of Time,
Which open for those that are near the end—
There where the heart buds grow—
Into the dark inwardliness
You sink downward—
Already past death
Which is only a windy passageway—
And freezing from going out
You open your eyes
Where a new star
Has already left its reflection—
Poets Corner 