Vicious Circle

We present this work in honor of the 115th anniversary of the poet’s death.

The firefly danced in the air impatiently:
“Oh how I wish that I could be that yellow,
That burns in the eternal blue, a candle far!”
And yet the star gazed on the moon with jealousy:

“If only I could copy such transparency,
Which, from the Grecian column to the Gothic sill,
Has contemplated lovers’ faces sighingly!”
And yet the moon gazed on the sun with bitter will:

“Oh misery! If l could be that giant ball,
Immortal clarity, the sum of all that’s light!”
The sun, though, leans his brilliant chaplet o´er the wall:

I’m burdened by this numen’s aureole bright…
Pm wearied by this blue, unbounded parasol…
Why could I not be born a firefly at night?”

Translation by Frederic G. William

The Steamer

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.

Nanai as you leave – with the winds – I ride
in the eye of silence and everything goes
and there are many ships, many seas – big
clouds above – the people and May.

And inside me roaring – all trembling –
a heavy steamer and
then again you and May and the winds
and then again the people, the people.

And all that leaves – and does not stay –
in a city uninhabited, and in me
ungoverned, may the ship take you
out of the storm of this world.

In the Light

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

We are indeed children of Light. What an endless mart goes on in the Light. In the Light is our sleeping and waking, the play of our life and death.

Beneath one great canopy, in the ray of one great sun, slowly, very slowly, burn the unnumbered lamps of life.

In the midst of this unending Light I lose myself; amidst this intolerable radiance I wander like one blind.

We are indeed children of Light. Why then do we fear when we see the Light? Come, let us look all around and see, here no man hath cause for any fear.

In this boundless ocean of Light, if a tiny lamp goes out, let it go; who can say that it will not burn again?

My Cousins on Sunday Come to Cut Roses

Francisco López Merino
Argentine
1904 – 1928

My cousins, on Sundays, come to cut roses
and to ask me for some book of verses in French.

They move about the garden lawn, cutting flowers,
straight from the pages of Musset or Samain.

They love pretty phrases and clear bright mornings.

An imperturbable statue can thrill them through and through.
They are waitmg for the coming of the autumn evenings
because through the window-panes everything looks gold…

And they come to cut roses on Sundays… They know
that the echo of their voices is pleasing to me.

Among the petals they leave their harmonious laughter;
surely they are laughing unaware.

My cousins, when it rains, do not come. Sweedy
I bring away whatever buds the wind has blown down;

I make a bouquet with them, and place beneath the bouquet
a volume of poems by Musset or Samain.

Hame

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 160th birthday.

God bless our land, our Scotland,
Grey glen an’ misty brae,
The blue heights o’ the Coolins,
The green haughs yont the Spey,
The weary wastes on Solway,
Snell winds blaw owre them a’ —
But aye it’s Hame, lad,
Yours an’ mine, lad,
Shielin’ or ha’.

It’s Hame, it’s Hame for ever,
Let good or ill betide!
The croon o’ some dear river,
The blink o’ ae braeside.

God bless our land; it’s yonder –
Far in the cold North Sea:
But ‘neath the old Saint’s glamour
It’s calling you an’ me:
Your feet tread Libyan deserts,
Mine press the wattle’s bloom,
But to-night we stand together
Among the broom.

It’s Hame, it’s Hame for ever,
Let shore or sea divide!
The croon o’ some dear river,
The blink o’ ae braeside.

God bless our land. We dream o’t —
The days aye brakin’ fine
On the lang, lane glints o’ heather
In the glens we kent langsyne.

Ay, we are Reubens, rovers,
‘Neath mony an alien star,
But flaunt the blue flag o’er us,
Pipe up the ” Braes o’ Mar,”
And steppe and nullah vanish,
And pomp and pelf and fame —
It’s gloamin’ — on a lown hillside,
An’ lads, . . . We’re . . . Hame.

Threshold

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Heritage Day.

I stepped out of the rain
into an Etruscan tomb.

It was a long walk
and a long way yet,

but the map said
they were here,

the old graves
on some farmer’s land.

Between tilled fields,
a shaded space

and now the rain
in grey-fall from the leaves.

I stopped alone, ducked in,
one small step down,

a coomb of earth and stone.
You stood outside

and waited while
I breathed the history bodily.

Soil, leaf, moist
must, membrane memory

and somewhere here, the bones.
My own limbs aching

from the marching day
and now this dusky interval,

an indentation, swerving
off the rutted track.

You call. I turn, step back,
re-join you to press on

between the leaning trees,
ancient coordinates,

each dip and hollow on the path
still slowly filling up with rain.

Sonnet XIX

We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.

When I die I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,
for you to smell the sea that we loved together
and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.

I want for what I love to go on living
and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,
for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

so that you reach all that my love orders for you,
so that my shadow passes through your hair,
so that they know by this the reason for my song.

Translation by Nicholas Lauridsen

The Uninvited

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

They came into our lives unasked for.
There was light momentarily, a flicker of wings,
a dance, a voice, and then they went out
again, like a light, leaving us not so much
in darkness, but in a different place
and alone as never before.

So we have been changed
and our vision no longer what it was,
and our hopes no longer what they were;
so a piece of us has gone out with them also,
a cold dream subtracted without malice,

the weight of another world added also,
and we did not ask, we did not ask ever
for those who stood smiling
and with flowers before the open door.

We did not beckon them in, they came in uninvited,
the sunset pouring from their shoulders,
so they walked through us as they would through water,
and we are here, in a different place,
changed and incredibly alone,
and we did not know, we do not know ever.

Deer

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.

Outside space and time the deer wander, at once swift and languid, and no one knows whether their true place is in immobility or in movement; they combine the two in such a way that we are forced to place them in eternity.

Inert or dynamic, they keep changing the natural horizon, and they perfect our ideas of time, space, and the laws of moving bodies. Made expressly to solve the ancient paradox, they are at once Achilles and the tortoise, the bow and the arrow. They run without ever overtaking. They stop and something remains always outside them, galloping.

The deer cannot stand still, but moves forward like an apparition, whether it be among real trees or out of a grove in a legend: Saint Hubert’s stag bearing a cross between his antlers, or the doe that gives suck to Genevieve de Brabant. Wherever they are encountered, the male and the female compose the same fabulous pair.

Quarry without peer, all of us mean to take it, even if only with the eyes. And if Jan de Yespes tells us that what he pursued, when hunting, was so high, so high-he is not referring to the earthly dove, but to the deer: profound, unattainable, and in flight.

Translation by W.S. Merwin

The Goldfish

We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Audrey Alexandra Brown
Canadian
1904 – 1998

Lazily through the clear
Shallow and deep,
He oars his chartless way,
Half-asleep
The little paradox – so bright – so cold
Although his flesh seem formed of fire and gold

High emperor of his dim
Bubble-empearled
Jet-shadowed greenish-shallowed
Water-world
Like a live torch, a brand of burning gold,
He sets the wave afire and still is cold.

Poets Corner

Celebrating a world of written and spoken verse