poetry

from Late Wind by Xu Demin

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I am the sun in children’s eyes that can’t scorch their hands
Around me life has sweets and moisture
Though I lost my flowers long ago
My heart is heavy with hidden fruit
Wind, even though you’re late
I am already ripe

translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin

The New Rule by Rumi

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It’s the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. He falls into a hole.
But down in the hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.

translated by Coleman Barks

from Rubaiyat by Nazim Hikmet

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4

I painted you on canvas only once
but picture you a thousand times a day.
Amazingly, your image there will last:
canvas has a longer life than I. . .

5

I can’t kiss or make love to your image,
but there in my city you’re flesh and blood,
and your red mouth, the honey I’m denied, your big eyes, really are,
and your surrender like rebel waters, your whiteness I can’t even touch. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet

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I didn’t know I loved clouds
whether I’m under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Migration II by Orhan Veli Kanık

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Now
One can see trees
From his window.
And it rains during the day
Along the canal.
The moon comes up at night
And there is a Thursday market
In the square.
But he,
Perhaps it is exile, money,
Perhaps a letter,
He thinks of something else.

translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat

Migration I by Orhan Veli Kanık

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From his window
Overlooking house tops
One could see the harbor
And church bells rang
Rang continuously on Sundays;
And at night
He could hear the train whistle
From his bed
At one o’clock;
And he began to love a girl
In the apartment
Across the street.
Despite all this
He left the place
And moved to another town.

translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat