Jorge Carrera Andrade

SUNDAY

.

Fruit seller church

seated at the corner of life:

crystal orange windows,

the sugar cane organ.

.

Angels: little chicks

of Mother Mary.

.

The blue-eyed bell

wanders off on bare feet

throughout the countryside

.

Sun clock:

angelic burro with its innocent sex;

wind, in Sunday best,

bringing news from the mountains.

.

Indian woman with loads of vegetables

embracing foreheads.

.

The sky rolls up its eyes

when it sees the church bell

run barefoot from the church.

Maria Del Carmen Paiva

SADNESS

.

It is sufficient.

It has already fainted--

that accidental word

that usually sketches itself out in farewells,

and that you bring since who knows when;

or perhaps

it came close one day

and started the bad habit of nurturing it.

.

Time wears out things,

and although you keep on under those separate stars

and the sun, with its overflowing wings of sulphur,

and you keep on living in spite of all this

and what has already happened.

You deserve the name that life gives you

with its unforeseen and unknown impulse.

Li-Young Lee

EATING TOGETHER

.

In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow covered road,

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

Tu Fu

ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT

.

Far off in Fu-chou she is watching the moonlights,

Watching it alone from the window of her chamber--

For our boy and girl, poor little babes,

Are too young to know where the Capital is.

Her cloudy hair is sweet with mist,

Her jade-white shoulder is cold in the moon.

...When shall we lie again, with no more tears,

Watching this bright light on our screen?

Shel Silverstein

BEAR IN THERE

.

There's a Polar Bear

In our Frigidaire--

He likes it cause it's cold in there.

With his seat in the meat

And his face in the fish

And his big hairy paws

In the buttery dish,

He's nibbling the noodles

He's munching the rice,

He's slurping the soda,

He's licking the ice.

And he lets out a roar.

If you open the door.

And it gives me a scare.

To know he's in there--

That Polary Bear

In our Frigiditydaire

Ojibwa

FIRE-FLY SONG

.

Flitting white-fire insects!

Wandering small-fire beasts!

Wave little stars about my bed!

Weave little stars into my sleep!

Come, little dancing white-fire bug,

Come, little flitting white-fire beast!

Light me with your white-flame magic,

Your little star-torch.

Octavio Paz

BETWEEN GOING AND STAYING THE DAY WAVERS

.

Between going and staying the day wavers,

in love with it's own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

.

All is visible and all is elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

.

Paper, book , pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

.

The light turns the invisible wall

into the ghostly theater of reflections.

.

I find myself in a middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

.

The moment scatters. Motionless.

I stay and go: I an a pause.

Gary Snyder

FOR/FROM LEW

.

Lew Welch just turned up one day,

live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said.

"You didn't shoot yourself after all."

"Yes I did." he said,

and even then I felt the tingling down my back.

"Yes you did, too." I said - "I can feel it now."

"Yeah." he said,

"There's a basic fear between your world and

mine. I don't know why.

What I came to say was,

teach the children about the cycles.

The life cycles. All other cycles.

That's what it's all about, and it's all forgot"

Maria Del Carmen Paiva

LATER

.

After all have past;

from the initial rupture,

from the all-too-sad alterations

and from the initial abnegation

that reconciled me to the opposite

[of forgetfulness;

after that battle in which my belly burned

until they remained sculpted

in the image of my exhaustion

in the exuberant sky

of those days;

and later

from the declines in the nightfall

and from the proposals that rose up

to accept what I no longer can,

the brilliant dawn came

with vague contents

of naked occupations

with innumerable admirations

for the rest of the world and the things

that also deserve my attention,

although it was only like a faint

in the magical sphere

and, sleep walking, inhaled a bit of freshness.

Ruben Dario

TOWERS OF GOD! POETS!

.

Towers of God! Poets!

Lightning rods of Heaven

that resist the fierce storms

like solitary mountains,

like peaks in the wilderness!

breakwaters of eternight!

.

Magic hope foretells

the day when the traitorous siren

will die on her musical rock.

Hope! Let us still hope!

.

Still hope. The bestial element

consoles itself with its hatred

of blessed poetry, hurling

insults from race to race.

.

The rebellion from below

is against excellence .

The cannibal waits for his chunk of flesh

with red gums and sharpened teeth.

.

Towers, fasten a smile to your banner.

Confront this evil and suspicion

with a proud puff of the breeze

and the tranquility of the sea and sky -

Ahmed Barakat

A SMALL WORD

.

I am going to the market

Please wait till I come back

You can wash your clothes if you get bored

And if the door disturbs you

Take it off

And put anything in its place

Please don't leave your face inside the mirror

And then quit by the window

Don't commit suicide as is your habit

.

But

Wait

For me

Till

I come back

.

Morocco

Allen Ginsberg

AN EASTERN BALLAD

.

I speak of love that comes to mind:

The moon is faithful, although blind,

She moves in thought she cannot speak

Perfect care has made her bleak

.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,

The earth so dark, so long my sleep.

I have become another child.

I wake to see the earth go wild.

Spike Milligan

THE SOLDIERS AT LAURO

.

Young are our dead

Like babies they lie

The womgs they blest once

Not healed dry

And yet - too soon

Into each space

A cold earth falls

On a colder face.

Quite still they lie

These fresh-cut reeds

Clutched in earth

Like winter seeds

But they will not bloom

When called by spring

To burst with leaf

And blossoming

They sleep on

In silent dust

As crosses rot

And helmets rust.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

fragment: TO THE MOON

.

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth -

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

Juan Ramon Jimenez

"I PULLED ON THE REINS"

.

I pulled on the reins,

[I turned the horse

of the dawn,

I came into life, pale.

.

Oh how they looked at me,

the flowers of my dream,

insane,

lifting their arms to the moon!

Flavia Cosma

SUPPLIANT HANDS

.

Suppliant hands

Streched out for

Plates made of snow,

Wish for Peace, for Light,

For Mercy from above.

.

They won't be given,

These precious gifts;

Only a dull, ephemeral illusion,

Only the moon's aura,

[an untouchable globe

And a tear

Welling up many others.

Amparo Osorio

FOOTSTEPS ALSO DIE

.

The wind sculpts faces

and you who watch the grass

ignore now the traces

of all eternity.

.

Aside from you

there are no possible roots.

.

How to name you

without death growing?

Braulio Arenas

THE OBVIOUS SIGHT

.

A clearly interior woman

I saw her in her eyes

I hugged her around herself and kissed her on her lips

As far as her feet were concerned I took off her shoes

As far as my life is concerned she answers to it

As far as rightness was concerned the two of us were right

We possessed dream

We possessed pleasure and the value of its answer

For life

I will hold your youth in my arms for life

.

A fisherman was mending his nets in your eyes

Such a beautiful afternoon I am tearing my forehead apart for a dream

I am shaking off all notice of slavery with the help of my hands

A notion of reality which now lays claim to dream

.

That afternoon

All the afternoons will be saying that afternoon

All of love's kisses will be repeated in that kiss

Latent love made manifest in life

.

Little hand among all hands destined to serve as light for my destiny

Little dream you go from here to there like lightening rides the eyes of a storm

Little dream you take this little hand by the hand

The entire sun was not beyond the cherry for these lips

Therefore the swordsmen forests buried their scythes

In honour of Saint Pol Roux's daughter who's name is divine

Because even though so little time has lapsed a curious legend has enriched the sea

This solid sea

Without exit

Vicente Huidobros

NIGHT

.

You hear the night glide across the snow

.

The song fell down from the trees

And through the fog sounded voices

.

I lit my cigar at a glance

.

Every time I open my lips

I flood the void with clouds

.

In the harbour

The masts are full of nests.

.

And the wind

Groans at the birds wings

.

THE WAVES ROCK THE DEAD SHIP

.

Whistling on the shore I

Look at the star that glows between my fingers

Tao Chien

TO HARMONIZE WITH THE POEM OF MY FRIEND TAI

.

An empty boat glides on without oars,

Returning to the infinite.

At the year's start, I gaze here and there,

And before I know it, it is already midyear.

Under the southern window, nothing withers,

And the forest is beautiful and luxuriant.

Seasonal rains pour down from the sacred source,

And the colour of the dawn is attuned to the warm wind.

We who have come must go;

Man definitely has an end.

While we live each day, waiting for the end

And bending our backs in the fields,

We surely cannot injure the inner self!

Though we meet with change, transformation, danger.

I am neither despondent nor exultant.

If in daily affairs we hold our spirits high,

Then what is the need to seek the sacred mountain tops?

Pablo Neruda

BIRD

.

It was passed from one bird to another,

the whole gift of the day.

The day went from flute to flute,

went dressed in vegetation,

in flights which opened a tunnel

through the wind would pass

to where birds were breaking open

the dense blue air -

and there night came in.

.

When I returned from so many journeys

I stayed suspended and green

between sun and geography -

I saw how wings worked,

how perfumes were transmitted

by feathery telegraph,

and from above I saw the path.

the springs and the roof tiles,

the fishermen at their trades,

the trousers of the foam,

I saw it all from my green sky.

I had no more alphabet

than the swallows in their courses,

the tiny, shining water

of the small bird on fire

which dances out of the pollen.

Ernesto Trejo

AT DAWN

.

The spirit surges among branches.

The nervous laughter of blackbirds

traces a dagger over the day's flesh.

.

To an assembly of birds on a wire,

plums below fill with their dark milk

and the shadow of a small cloud sizzles.

.

Two stars still burn:

eyes about to go out:

another blind day.

Thich Nhat Hahn

DRINK YOUR TEA

.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

-slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

Alley on the Quiet

Laser tongued failing spirit flying out my rib cage

the trinket "bring up mindfulness with large icons"

you're floating the blood sea brain "L'Acadie hidden

in the desk, don't part the sea!!" alcohol made a promise

to cut you down. To drop in the end; the prickly oil

"bounce like no tomorrow, a contorting blast; Rub the Belly!!!"

Alvaro Marin

A SONG FOR JUAN RULFO

.

The silence of the future ruins

gently move to and fro in helplessness

in this place called earth

because it yet doesn't have a name

its inhabitants

have one eye on the moon of death

and the other on a burning sun

The voice

does not spring from the lips

it is the deep trance of silence

Silence is the name of this place

so-and-so is everybody's name

and stone or ash

the names we shall have in the void

.

there's geography with the foot prints of the absent

the cut-down trees lose their leaves

in some turn of eternity

and cover the streets of the century with dead leaves

Wind passes deaf and saying nothing

it is a murmur as imposing as midnight

but not everything begins or ends here

in this geography.

Pedro Garcia Cabrera

THE OPEN ENGAGEMENT

.

To the right of the voice of the statues dream

a river of birds flows by.

The river is a little girl and the bird a key.

And the key a field of wheat.

That opens a small snail of a hundred days.

This means the hills of broken men

Are made of cardboard, wood and green walnuts.

But don't touch that anguish; it's all from the Sunday

When they created the nests in which tomorrow the

[adulterous stones will brood.

It's from that fish looking through the sea's eye

At how war is the tenderness guarding the empty beds

And peace that blood with which feet spatter their chains.

Let's go now. Don't pierce the shadow I had four years ago,

For my fingers ache with hunger and my heart with rains.

Better for you to sleep, to go on walking.

I'll wait for you till the tigers, on the lake shore after the

[wine harvest,

Lying farmhands to the fields

And shoulders of someone on the deserted promises

[without water.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

The love I bear thee, finding words enough,

And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,

Between our faces, to cast light on each?-

I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach

My hand to hold my spirit so far off

From myself--me--that I bring thee proof

In words, of love hid in me out of reach.

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood

Commend my woman-love to thy belief, -

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,

And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,

Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

Hakuin

You no sooner attain the great void

Then body and mind are lost together.

Heaven and Hell -- a straw.

The Buddha relm- Pandemonian-- shambles.

Listen: a nightingale strains her voice serenading the snow.

Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand.

Should you desire the great traquility,

Prepare to sweat white beads.

Yehuda Amichai

MY FATHER

.

The memory of my father is wrapped in

white paper, like sandwiches taken for a days work.

.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

.

and the rivers of his hands

overflowed with good deeds.

Juan Sanchez Pelaez

VI

.

Elena is earth seaweed

Ocean wave.

She exists because she owns the nostalgia

Of these elements,

But she knows it,

She dreams,

And trusts,

.

Standing on the rock and the coral of the abyss.

.

Actually, Elena

Knows the simple things,

Because before being a damsel

She was Siren and Ondina.

And before being

Siren and Ondina

She swam in the whirlwind, in the number, in the fire.

.

I must have fallen onto the trail, and recalled,

Oh delirious host;

Right there, where the afternoon and the dusk are appeased,

They separated me.

.

I had another love,

Pure like ecstasy,

Fragile like fantasy,

Absolute like my other love.

.

I heard a trumpet of fog in the desert

My falcons emerged from the foliage.

.

In all seasons

In autumn or in spring

Elena is earth seaweed

Ocean wave.

.

Venezuela

Tomas Transtromer

A PAGE OF THE NIGHT BOOK

.

I stepped ashore one May night

in the cool moonshine

where grass and flowers were grey

but the scent green.

.

I glided up the slope

in the colour-blind night

while white stones

signalled to the moon.

.

a period of time

a few minutes long

fifty-eight years wide.

.

And behind me

beyond the lead-shimmering waters

was the other shore

and those who ruled.

.

People with a future

instead of a face.

.

Sweden

Flavia Cosma

LEAVES OF A DIARY XXX

.

I fall into sleep as in another world,

Subterranean or extraterrestrial,

A world with foreign laws and customs,

With mysterious temples and hills.

.

Strange things are happening there

But they don't astonish us in the least.

On the streets we meet with unknown throngs,

Who we feel we have seen before

In our day-to-day life.

.

And out of the blue

The miracle should happen,

O, if we'd regain

The keys to the tall gates,

We'd keep them open between sleep and watchfulness,

We would understand everything, all at once,

The past,

And the future,

Wandering time and the vastness;

Leisurely and wise

We'd sate ourselves

On a tree of bitter, ripened fruit.

.

Romania