Absence
The moon
nicotine of a kiss…
A sideways glance
like the mast of a pirate ship
beyond a distant island.
by Luljeta Lleshanaku, Albania
international poetry
37. Aluminum Oxide
No one offered you a courtyard
where sometimes you’d see
pin-headed soldiers
standing beneath the trees
Apples fallen everywhere
A good many women
in seemingly good spirits
speak incomprehensibly
jabbering as they pass by
legs reflected in the water
Many flowers
two buds
by Gu Cheng, China
The Question Mark
Poor thing. Poor crippled measure of
punctuation. Who would know,
who could imagine you used to be
an exclamation point?
What force bent you over?
Age, time and the vices
of this century?
Did you not once evoke,
call out and stress?
But you got weary of it all,
got wise and turned like this.
by Gevorg Emin, Armenia
Old Mountains Want To Turn To Sand
I have my roots inside me,
a skein of red threads.
The stones have their roots inside them,
like fine little ferns.
Wrapped around their softness
the stones sleep hard.
For centuries they have rested
under the sun.
Old mountains
want to turn to sand.
They let themselves go
and open up to water.
After centuries of thirst!
Like language–
that great mountain broken up
by our tongues.
We turn language to sand,
immersing the tongue
in a running stream
that moves mountains.
–Tommy Olofsson, Sweden
The Meaning Of Simplicity
I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me,
if you don’t find me, you’ll find the things,
you’ll touch what my hand has touched,
our hand prints will merge.
The August moon glitters in the kitchen
like a tin-plated pot (it gets that way
because of what I’m saying to you),
it lights up the empty house and
the house’s kneeling silence–
always the silence remains kneeling.
Every word is a doorway
to a meeting, one often cancelled,
and that’s when a word is true:
when it insists on the meeting.
–Yannis Ritsos, Greece
Wind’s Foam
Nothing lasts, behold.
Behold how the leaves, the flowers, the old villagers,
the pose of rivers’ dancing, the brazen pitchers and
the fire of hookah
and the flock of grown up girls gradually diminish
like the monsoon of Hilsa fish !
The yellow leaves, sounding in the wind,
fall down on the droughty desolate land.
The foreign ducks too,
on whose bodies there are millions of bubbles, fly away
into the shallow blue cup of the sky.
Why doesn’t anything last long?
The corrugated iron sheet, the hay or the muddy walls
and the undecaying banyan tree of village
get uprooted by the terrible typhoon of Chittagong.
The plaster splits and in the long run the mosque of our village,
like our Faith, collapses down with a heavy crash.
The nests of sparrows, the love, the twigs and tendrils
and the covers of books fall off twisted.
By the water’s bite of the Meghna,
the crops’ green scream of the horizon starts trembling.
The houses float, float the pitchers and the cowsheds.
Like the affection of my elder sister, the old
embroidered pillow gets also sunk.
After the decay of dwelling-houses, nothing exists more.
Only the birds, fond of water, flying in the sky
wipe off the foam of wind from their beaks.
–Al Mahmud, Bangladesh
The Indians
The Indians
descend
maze after maze
with their emptiness on their backs.
In the past
they were warriors over all things.
They put up monuments to fire
and to the rains whose black fists
put the fruit in the earth.
In the theaters of their cities of colors
shone vestments
and crowns
and golden masks
brought from faraway enemy empires.
They marked time
with numerical precision.
They gave their conquerors
liquid gold to drink
and grasped the heavens
like a tiny flower.
In our day
they plow and seed the ground
the same as in primitive times.
Their women shape clay
and the stones of the field, or weave
while the wind
disorders their long, coarse hair,
like that of goddesses.
I’ve seen them barefoot and almost nude,
in groups,
guarded by voices poised like whips,
or drunk and wavering with the pools of the setting sun
on the way back to their shacks
in the last block of the forgotten.
I’ve talked with them up in their refuges
there in the mountains watched over by idols
where they are happy as deer
but quiet and deep
as prisoners.
I’ve felt their faces
beat my eyes until the dying light
and so have discovered
my strength is neither
sound nor strong.
Next to their feet
that all the roads destroyed
I leave my own blood
written on an obscure bough.
–Roberto Sosa, Honduras
In His Room
In his room the man watches
light shine on the fruit
the apples gathering shadows
the shadows of resting pears
the watermelon’s gash
of liquid pulp
the ancient figs
among solemn walnuts
at night in his room
the man watches fruit
–Homero Aridjis, Mexico
Travel Journal Entry
Travel List:
bug spray
lotion
deoderant
swimsuit
laptop…
Directions:
9:42 TGV 9566 platform 1
Hotel de la Comete
196 Boulevard de la Villete, La Villete near 19e
Left here…
June 23rd first impressions:
our ridiculous walk to find the Moulin Rouge
left my feet blistered and bruised
hungry i am, but money must be preserved
for the next train
thank god for all the pasta and bread to
fill the belly
Notre Dame made me want to sing to the hunchback
and in between the stares
constant glares
i found out that crepes can be savory
graffiti subways
public muggings
The Prison Cell
The Prison Cell
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear,
For the cell to become a distant land
The prison guard got angry.
He put an end to the dialogue
He said he didn’t care for poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.
He came back to see me
–Where did all this water come from?
–I brought it from the Nile.
–And the trees?
–From the orchards of Damascus.
–And the music?
–From my heartbeat.
The prison guard got mad,
But returned in the evening
–Where did this moon come from?
–From the nights of Baghdad.
–And the wine?
–From the vineyards of Algiers.
–And this freedom?
–From the chain you tied me with last night.
The prison guard grew so sad…
He begged me to give him back
His freedom.
by Mahmud Darwish, Palestine
Translated and abridged by Ben Bennani
