Venice masks

Tuesday 31 January 2017

Love - Czesław Miłosz

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.

Monday 30 January 2017

How beautiful is Yak Legpai Lhadar’s face! - Ap Chuni Dorji

How beautiful is Yak Legpai Lhadar’s face!
Yak Legpai Lhadar- the god-sent calf!

Sunday 29 January 2017

When the apricot tree blossoms - Hamid Olimjon

Flowers have decorated the branches
Calling the name of life at dawn,
And naughty wind on the first morning
Stole away the aroma of the blossoms.

Friday 27 January 2017

The boat of words casts anchor - Mohamed Al-Harthy

Remarkable, the three of them together:
the mouse,
the keyboard
and the word processor

Thursday 26 January 2017

Message from a Martyr - Mbarka Mint al-Barra’

Fire your bullets -- our hearts are already ablaze
       In this land, grief wells up from my distress

Wednesday 25 January 2017

Because Of You - Amir Hamzah

'Flowers burst into bloom,
Loving life because of You;
Love spreading like flowers in my heart
Filled it with the fragrance of blossoms, and their dust.

Monday 23 January 2017

We don’t sing anymore - Jeffrey Mane Febi

Here! Comfort and solace we seek. Where we love and beloved.
Once a promise I smell; of together hearkening to sounds of poetry;
Of to the beat of alliterations together dancing;
Of together in fields of metaphor, cuddling and be cheery;
Of through the bars of many a rhyme kissing.

Sunday 22 January 2017

Sand - Rolf Jacobsen

There is a precise total for all the grains of sand on earth,
as well as for the starry worlds above our heads

Saturday 21 January 2017

Don’t stay far away from me for long - Juan Rodolfo Wilcock

Don’t stay far away from me for long
unless you want memory to devour all

Friday 20 January 2017

Pop Melody - Sigfús Daðason

The dream is as moonlight
the moonlight as a dream
as moonlight
the dream I finally had last night

Thursday 19 January 2017

1886 - Abay Kunanbayev

Oh, my luckless Kazakh, my unfortunate kin,
An unkempt moustache hides your mouth  and chin.
Blood on your right cheek, fat on your left —
When will the dawn of your reason begin?

Wednesday 18 January 2017

To the Bío Bío - Andres Bello

Blest were he, O Bío Bío!
Who could dwell forevermore
In a deep grove, cool and shady,
Upon thine enchanted shore!

Tuesday 17 January 2017

Read - Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo

Make no sound, do not speak:
off to explore a forest, eyes, heart,
mind, dreams . . .

Monday 16 January 2017

Chernobyl - Volha Ipatava

House. Hundred-year oak. A well-spring flowing
And storks winging from a distant strand.
'Human, grant that we may make our home here,
Very sweet to us appears this land.'

Sunday 15 January 2017

Decora Lux Aeternitatis - Elpis

Eternal glory, with the streaming ray
Of holy fire, has filled the golden day,
Crowning with light the apostolic chiefs,
And opening through the stars their luminous way.

Friday 13 January 2017

a sudden fear of coming home - Naja Marie Aidt

a sudden fear of coming home
like meeting up with a sect one has left
and what if one can’t hold out against them

Thursday 12 January 2017

Year of Tango - Varand

Sunset, you sombre sunset,
Ardent music, boundless sorrow.
New stairs, new terrace, a new abode,
Golden age of dreams, of senses…

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Homo sapiens - Ludwig Steinherr

The man down on his knees who's fated
to scrub the cobblestones
with a toothbrush —

Tuesday 10 January 2017

I miss you - Bongiwe Dlamini

your hands, your eyes
I miss exploring your mouth, your mind

Monday 9 January 2017

Minchmoor - William Hamilton

Sweet smells the birk: green grows, green grows the grass,
    Yellow on Yarrow's banks the gowan,
Fair hangs the apple fraie the rock,
    Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan.

Sunday 8 January 2017

Shepherd of tender youth - St. Clement of Alexandria

Shepherd of tender youth
Guiding in love and truth
  Through devious ways;
Christ our triumphant king,
We come Thy name to sing;
Hither our children bring
  Tributes of praise.

Saturday 7 January 2017

Has My Heart Gone To Sleep? - Antonio Machado

Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,

Friday 6 January 2017

The Return - Claribel Alegría

How will the return be?
My parents won’t be there
I won’t climb the volcano
with them
to gather orchids.

Thursday 5 January 2017

At Euroma - Henry Kendall

They built his mound of the rough red ground,
  By the dip of a desert dell,
Where all things sweet are killed by the heat,
  And scattered o’er flat and fell.
In a burning zone they left him alone,
  Past the uttermost western plain;
And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn
  In the voices of wind and rain.

Wednesday 4 January 2017

The Horror of the Rain - Jean Delville

Implacably, dismally, prophetically,
It is raining, interminable tears of rain, it rains
Death upon the dismal city, long bereaved of sun.
It rains annihilation, immensely, upon my sleep
and my tormented dreams and, in the night, it rains

Tuesday 3 January 2017

The Cloud Rains - Amir Khosrow

Cloud raining, and I from my friend am separated:
          how can, on such a day, the hearts be so separated?

Monday 2 January 2017

What do animals dream? - Yahia Lababidi

Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams
unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?

Sunday 1 January 2017