This world–
call it an image
caught in a mirror–
real it is not,
nor unreal either
translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson
poetry
a tanka by Ariwara No Narihara
Tsui ni yuku
Michi to wa kanete
Kikishi kado
Kino kyo to wa
Omowazarishi wo
I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
from When The Day Comes 2 by Ghalib
How long is our life? How long does an eyelash flutter?
The warmth of a poetry gathering is like a single spark.
O Ghalib, the sorrows of existence, what can cure them but death?
There are so many colors in the candle flame, and then the day comes.
translated by Robert Bly with Sunil Dutta
from The Cries We Make by Hafiz
There where the work of the Muslim cloister
Is celebrated, one finds as well the bell
Of the monk’s cell and the name of the Cross.
from Waiting in the Grief House by Hafiz
Although the way station you want to reach
Is dangerous and the goal distant, do not
Sink into sadness: all roads have an end.
translated by Robert Bly
Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu by Li Po (Li Bei)
Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Mountain,
Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?
How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!
You must have been suffering from poetry again.
translated by Shigeyoshi Obata
from Singing Out of Key by Hafiz
Almost nowhere now do they appreciate the art of poetry and spiritual talk.
Hafiz says, Don’t worry, to somewhere else that is rich in freedom we will go.
translated by Thomas Rain Crowe
A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance–
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave. . .
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
translated by Robert Bly
Flexions by Paul Blackburn
the rivers of afternoon
flowing about you as you
move . stop, standing
afterward in my bathroom
naked among the young plants
in the green light singing
softly to yourself
untitled poem 2 by Antonio Machado
Mankind owns four things
that are no good at sea:
rudder, anchor, oars,
and the fear of going down.
translated by Robert Bly
Leonard Durso 