When Death Comes

We present this work in honor of the 5th anniversary of the poet’s death.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

from Thirukkural

We present this work in honor of Thiruvalluvar Day.

On rain, rests the world
Sure for its prosperity
Treat rain –nectar bold!

It helps grow great food
Sans water no agriculture
Quenches thirsty world!

Water all in sea
Helps not life on earth so well
Rain water gives glee!

Rain sustains the world
Makes the fertile land yield more
Sans farmers can’t mould!

By absence, rain destroys
Life, living, people and the world
By care it creates!

If rain fails to grace
The earth with its compassion
No grass you can trace!

Ocean becomes dry
When the sky bears not the clouds
People made to cry!

Rain – gift of nature
Whenever denied to the world
Bleak – nobles’ future!

When powerful rain fails
Noble charity gets failed
Nobles’ penance falls!

Sans water no life
When the Lord of Rain conspires
Virtue faces knife!

Translation by N.V. Subbaraman

The Door of the Voyage with No Return

We present this work in honor of MLK Day.

Gorée Island, Senegal

This devil’s place that wasn’t built by demons
but by men like us
civilized enlightened the flower and cream of the West

The sea onto which the Door of the Voyage With No Return
is not the sea of liberty is not the sea of the infinite
This is the perversion of the sea

From here the ancestors of Martin Luther King
Rosa Parks Duke Ellington Toni Morrison left

They were seized tortured chained
by flesh-and-blood fates that wove their destinies
with barbed wire

I Wish I Had Wings

We present this work in honor of the Tunisian holiday, Revolution Day.

I only wish I had wings
Wings like those of the angels
so that I can fly over seas and rivers,
Hills and deserts…
I ask my soul to borrow me her flames,
I need that only for a short while,
I want to walk in that glow for me.
I wish to have powerful wings,
Stronger than the wings of birds,
I need wings as vast as infinite space…
wings as vast as history.
Yes, I wish I had wings of clay and of fire,
purple and gold, silver and tin,
iron and diamonds,
wings heavy and light.
I wish to had wings which hold me over the universe;
everywhere I can be a loaf of bread in the hand
Of a starved infant…
A handkerchief wipes of the tears of a bereaved of child.
A smile breaks night’s fear,
A hymn of a lost Bedouin
Entertains a peace’s caravan.

Sonnet LXXV

We present this work in honor of the 415th anniversary of the poet’s death.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”

“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Song of the Absent Rower

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 175th birthday.

To Mr. Rufino Cuervo and Mr. Miguel A. Caro

How sad the night is
Tonight, the night is so sad
A sky without a single star
Row on, row on!

For the black woman of my soul,
I soak in sweat
As I toil away at sea,
What will she do? What will she do?

Will she sigh in woe
For her beloved zambo
Will she even remember me…
Weep on, weep on!

Women are like everything
In this wretched land;
With art fish are hauled out
From the sea, out from the sea!

With art iron is molten,
The mapaná snake is tamed;
Sorrows faithful and firm
They are no more, they are no more!

How dark the night is tonight,
Tonight how dark is the night,
It is as dark as absence.
Row on, row on!

Translation by Stephanos Stephanides

Sénac still present

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.

This rust inside me
the sun revives.

Obsessional smell
of the wave
on my eye

Terrace
where interminably a
telluric laughter unfurls

Laughter of an Algerian girl
(Jean, look
how the suns commingle
and the praying wave
caresses the stirrups

Fissures — butterfly elytra —
in the acrobat azure

And marrying the sea
—immense—
your wheat field beard

Translation by Pierre Joris

We Go to the Country

We go to the country to welcome the sorrow of the country, because we are deprived of our feet, we go with our heads

We have gone this way a hundred times and we are going once again, we are going to welcome Sagar.

Since it is not possible to walk, we turn to Dostnameh and go with the wings of a pigeon

Now, fresh anxiety is falling on my hair, a breeze is blowing, my leaves are falling from Shiraz.

Eisham’s lips sing to every age, but Shionam’s tongue pours a thousand praises every time

I have a heart that says salt in the embrace of the ointment for its sore wounds and yawns after yawns.

I wonder if the patterns of our patience will come true, that the love of this plan will pour immeasurably.

Dying Man With Mirror

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.

Pushkin dying
Of his duel wound
Asked for a mirror
And a bowl of millet porridge
LIKE A MONKEY he said
Spooning into the mirror
As far as we know we will
Not see each other again We do not need
To fool ourselves any more Probably
Nothing new will happen but there will be Probably
Nothing Whatever that may be
Even the leap into the mirror would not bring
Us closer to each other Glass clinks
The way women scream

Translation by Carl Weber