Song of the Stranger

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 110th birthday.

04-16 Jabes — Edmond Jabès
Egyptian
1912 – 1991

I’m looking for
a man I don’t know,
who’s never been more myself
than since I started to look for him.
Does he have my eyes, my hands
and all those thoughts like
flotsam of time?
Season of a thousand wrecks,
the sea no longer a sea,
but an icy watery grave.
Yet farther on, who knows how it goes on?
A little girl sings backward
and nightly reigns over trees
a shepherdess among her sheep.
Let us wrench thirst from the grain
of salt no drink can quench.
Along with the stones, a whole world eats
its heart out, being
from nowhere, like me.

Translation by Rosemarie Waldrop

Lift Up My Steps

We present this work in honor of the First Day of Passover.

04-15 Freha — Freha Bat Avraham
Moroccan
d. 1756

Lift up my steps, O Lord, my savior,
I’d go to my country with a placid joy;
an ignorant people pursues me now,
and taunts me with a thunderous noise.
Take me, quickly, to a Galilee mountain,
and send your anger across their skies;
there I’ll see your light, my crown,
and say: Now I can die.

Meeting the Prophetess

We present this work in honor of Dr. Ambdekar Jayanti.

04-14 Meena — Meena Kandasami
Indian
b. 1984

Leave your books behind.

Since memory,
Like knowledge, is a traitor,
Erase every hoarding of your horrible past.

At last, when you enter her world
Of fraying edges and falling angels
Don’t barter words where touch will do and be the truth.
For once allow her silence to sear, strip your life-layers
Because she who knows the truth will not know the tale.

The Hyperboreans from Pythian X

04-13 Pindar — Pindar
Greek
c. 518 B.C. – c. 438 B.C.

Among them too are the Muses
For everywhere
To flute and string the young girls
Are dancing,
In their hair the gold leaves of the bay:
The dance whirls them away:
Age or disease, no toil,
Battle or ill-day’s luck
Can touch them, they
Are holy, they
Will outlast time, exempted
From the anger of the Goddess
And all decay.

Here the hero came
With the head
That shocked a royal house, turning
King and all into stone:
It was long long ago, if
Time means anything;
Long, long ago.

Without and Within

We present this work in honor of the 240th anniversary of the poet’s death.

04-12 Metastasio — Pietro Metastasio
Italian
1698 – 1782

If every man’s internal care
Were written on his brow,
How many would our pity share
Who raise our envy now?
The fatal secret, when revealed,
Of every aching breast,
Would prove that only while concealed
Their lot appeared the best.

I’ve Grown Into a Child

04-11 Hafsa — Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya
Arab Andalusian
1135 – 1191

I’ve grown into a child
jealous of my own eyes.
Mad that they get to host you,
grinning for when I’ll steal you.

Like parents my eyes demand caution,
holding you beyond reach.
They make me think of nothing
but later—someday—the Day of Release.

Advice

We present this work in honor of the 310th anniversary of the poet’s death.

04-10 Nabi — Yusuf Nabi
Turkish
1642 – 1712

Look you, most poetry of novice poets
Is lovelocks and hyacinths,
Roses and nightingales,
Wine and cup

They cannot leave
The orbit of the beloved
The body and cheek,
Lip and moist eye

Now they wander to spring,
Then to the meadow
And touch upon the cypress,
The rose and jasemin

They cannot walk
The untrodden path
Nor turn on
The less-travelled road

They can neither hunt
Poetry’s exalted ideas
Nor lasso the unseen world’s game

They make their way
On commonplaces
On well-known and experienced words

That double couplet bends
Under two donkey-loads of stuff
The cloth of its meaning
Cannot be fresh

So do not compose poetry
With empty words
Do not draw your net
Fishless from the sea

Intimate

04-09 Borrero — Juana Borrero
Cuban
1877 – 1896

You want to study the night of my spirit
There, in the pit of my soul
the place never reached
by the clear sunlight of hope

But don’t ask me what sleeps
beneath the veil of speechless shade;
stop beside the abyss, and weep
as if by the edge of a grave

Endless Ages

We present this work in honor of Buddha Purmina.

04-08 Bodidharma — Bodidharma
Indian
c. 470 – c. 520

Through endless ages, the mind has never changed
It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.
It isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future.
true or false, male or female. It isn’t reserved for
monks or lay people, elders to youths, masters or
idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.
It isn’t bound by cause and effect and doesn’t
struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.
You can’t own it and you can’t lose it. Mountains.
rivers or walls can’t impede it. But this mind is
ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the
mind of the senses. So many are looking for this
mind, yet it already animates their bodies.
It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.

Atonement

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

04-07 Melissanthi — Melissanthi
Greek
1907 – 1991

Each time I sinned a door half-opened
and the angels who hadn’t thought me beautiful in my chastity
tipped the vessels of their flowering souls.
Each time I sinned a door seemed to open
and tears of compassion dripped in the grass.
But if the sword of my remorse pushed me from the skies
each time I sinned a door half-opened.:
the people thought me ugly;
only the angels thought me beautiful.

Translation by Karen Emmerich

Poets Corner

Celebrating a world of written and spoken verse