Love makes woman a man and man a woman

Lamia Makaddam
Tunisian
b. 1971

 

It is not enough for you to touch me with your hand
love is touching me with everything, with woman and distance
and a bunch of grapes.
It is not enough that you take me under you and on top of you
you have to drag me by feet and into nightmares as well.
Love is not a relationship between two individuals like they told us
but rather two universes melting, a mixture of water with water.
It is to love women as if I were you, to lust after their breasts
to be riven seeing their naked flesh
to gasp when a woman lifts her hair with her hand to put it behind her
and just as your heart weakens when you see a hanging fruit
my heart weakens for the same reason.
Without air between us we are breathless
without the sun rising above me and above you we are eyeless.
The idea: love makes woman a man and man a woman
and makes water into love
and love into life.
I incarnate in you like I incarnate in light and soil
and you incarnate in me like life and death.
I assembled you only because I collected you from here and there:
some of your heart I brought from a train station
some of your eyes from glasses in bars
some of your skin from a cemetery
meanwhile you are here
and not here.

Translation by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil

The Contrast

Yulia Zhadovskaya
Russian
1824 – 1883

 

Dear, you will soon forget me,
You I shall ne’er forget,
You’ll find new loves for old ones,
For me love’s sun is set.

New faces soon will greet you,
You’ll choose yourself new friends,
New thoughts you’ll get and haply
New joy to make amends:

While I in silent sorrow
Life’s joyless way shall go,
And how I love and suffer
Only the grave will know.

Translation by P.E. Matheson

Father

We present this work in honor of Father’s Day.

Edgar Albert Guest
American
1881 – 1959

 

My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.

My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There’s nothing that he cannot do,
He knows no word like “fail.”
“Our confidence” he would restore,
Of that there is no doubt;
But if there is a chair to mend,
We have to send it out.

All public questions that arise,
He settles on the spot;
He waits not till the tumult dies,
But grabs it while it’s hot.
In matters of finance he can
Tell Congress what to do;
But, O, he finds it hard to meet
His bills as they fall due.

It almost makes him sick to read
The things law-makers say;
Why, father’s just the man they need,
He never goes astray.
All wars he’d very quickly end,
As fast as I can write it;
But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
‘Tis mother has to fight it.

In conversation father can
Do many wondrous things;
He’s built upon a wiser plan
Than presidents or kings.
He knows the ins and outs of each
And every deep transaction;
We look to him for theories,
But look to ma for action.

Ballata

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 710th birthday.

Giovanni Boccaccio
Italian
1313 – 1375

 

I am young and fain to sing
In this happy tide of spring
Of love and many a gentle thing,
I wander through green meadows dight
With blossoms gold and red and white;
Rose by the thorn and lily fair,
Both one and all I do compare
With him who, worshipping my charms,
For aye would fold me in his arms
As one unto his service sworn.
Then, when I find a flower that seems
Like to the object of my dreams,
I gather it and kiss it there,
I flatter it in accents fair,
My heart outpour, my soul stoop down,
Then weave it in a fragrant crown
Among my flaxen locks to wear.
The rapture nature’s floweret gay
Awakes in me doth last alway,
As if I tarried face to face
With him whose true love is my grace;
Thoughts which its fragrancy inspires
I cannot frame to my desires,
My sighs their pilgrimage do trace.
My sights are neither harsh nor sad
As other women’s are, but glad
And tender; in so fond a wise
They seek my love that he replies
By coming hither, and so gives
Delight to her who in him lives
Yet almost wept: “Come, for hope dies.”

Translation by Lorna de Lucchi

Written Playfully on Hearing the Honglou meng.

Shen Shanbao
Chinese
1808 – 1862

 

For no reason she refined the stone—I laugh at Queen Wo.
This led the idiot into the land of dreams.
All fight to admire the one napping by the peonies in the spring breeze,
Who sympathizes with the one sick in the Xiaoxiang Pavilion in the autumn rain?
Alone embracing this inextricable bind, a love for eternity
Hard to dispel this desolate feeling, lines of tears flow.
If you don’t believe that all beauties are ill-fated,
See all the ready-made patterns and stale compositions customarily left behind.

Translation by Grace Fong

Mexican Landscape

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 165th birthday.

Manuel José Othón
Mexican
1858 – 1906

 

Look at the landscape: vastness down below,
vastness on vastness in the sky. Between,
sapped at their footing by the wild ravine,
the high sierras rise, a distant show.

Look, where the grim half-burnt savannah broods:
gigantic block upon gigantic block,
torn by the earthquake from the living rock.
Never a track and never a path intrudes.

Adesolate and burning atmosphere,
studded with eagles, high, ethereal,
like nails on which unhurried hammers fall.

Tremendous darkness, and tremendous fear
and silence, interrupted if at all
by the triumphal gallop of the deer.

Translation by Timothy Ades

We Pledge

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

Moufdi Zakaria
Algerian
1908 – 1977

We swear by the lightning that destroys,
By the streams of generous blood being shed,
By the bright flags that wave,
Flying proudly on the high mountains,
That we have risen up, and whether we live or die,
We are resolved that Algeria shall live –
So be our witness -be our witness – be our witness!

We are soldiers in revolt for truth
And we have fought for our independence.
When we spoke, none listened to us,
So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm
And the sound of machine guns as our melody,
We are resolved that Algeria shall live –
So be our witness -be our witness -be our witness!

O France, the time of reproof is over
And we have ended it as a book is ended;
O France, this is the day of reckoning
So prepare to receive from us our answer!
In our revolution is the end of empty talk;
We are resolved that Algeria shall live –
So be our witness -be our witness -be our witness!

From our heroes we shall make an army come to being,
From our dead we shall build up a glory,
Our spirits shall ascend to immortality
And on our shoulders we shall raise the standard.
To the nation’s Liberation Front we have sworn an oath,
We are resolved that Algeria shall live –
So be our witness -be our witness -be our witness!

The cry of the Fatherland sounds from the battlefields.
Listen to it and answer the call!
Let it be written with the blood of martyrs
And be read to future generations.
Oh, Glory, we have held out our hand to you,
We are resolved that Algeria shall live –
So be our witness -be our witness -be our witness!

When You Eyes Go to Bed Worn Out

Rosario Murillo
Nicaraguan
b. 1951

 

When your eyes go to bed worn out
with so much unending waiting
when the smile once more comes back to us
and vital still between us
by that time
over there beyond the old oak tree
in that street which my dreams keep watch over today
together we will remember
we will talk of the smell of weariness
we will retell each other the war.

Translation by Janet Brof