Weave a carpet for us, Bodil,
weave it from dreams and visions,
weave it out of wind,
so that I, like a Bedouin, can
roll it out when I pray,
pull it around me
when I sleep,
and then every morning cry out,
“Table, set yourself!”
Weave it
for a cape in the cold weather,
and a sail
for my boat!
One day I will sit down on the carpet
and sail away on it
to another world.
translated by Robert Bly
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.
It’s that dream we carry with us
That something wonderful will happen,
That it has to happen,
That time will open,
That the heart will open,
That doors will open,
That the mountains will open,
That wells will leap up,
That the dream will open,
That one morning we’ll slip in
To a harbor that we’ve never known.
translated by Robert Bly
A bank of fine grass and light breeze
A tall-masted solitary night boat.
Stars descend over the vast wild plain;
The moon bobs in the Great River’s flow.
Fame: is it ever to be won in literature?
Office: I should give up, old and sick.
Floating, floating, what am I like?
Between earth and sky, a gull alone.
translated by James J.Y. Liu & Irving Y. Lo
Silent, I climb the Western Tower alone
And see the hook-like moon.
Parasol-trees lonesome and drear
Lock in the courtyard autumn clear.
Cut, it won’t sever;
Be ruled, ’twill never
What sorrow ’tis to part!
It’s an unspeakable taste in the heart.
Great stories matter–
but the one who tells them
hands them on
in turn to another
who also will.
What’s in the world
is water, earth,
and fire, some people,
animals, trees, birds,
etc. I can see
as far as you,
and what I see I tell
as you told me
or have or will.
You’ll see too
as well.
i want a country
let the sky be blue, the bough green, the cornfield yellow
let it be a land of birds and flowers
i want a country
let there be no pain in the head, no yearning in the heart
let there be an end to brothers’ quarrels
i want a country
let there be no rich or poor, no you and me
on winter days let everyone have house and home
i want a country
let living be like loving from the heart
if there must be complaint, let it be of death
translated by Bernard Lewis
The air filled with a pungent charcoal smell
And the doors closed before sunset;
From that neighborhood as languid as a laudanum
You are the only surviving trace in my memory, you
Who smiled at the vast light in your own dreams.
With your eyes, your teeth, and your white neck
What a sweet neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Your house was as small as a neat box;
Its balcony thickly intertwined and the shades
Of ivies at the tiny hours of the sunset
Washed over in a nearby hidden brook.
A green flowerpot stood in your window all year round
And in spring acacias blossomed in your garden
What a charming neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Earlier you had long hair, then short and styled;
Light-complexioned, you were as tall as an ear of corn,
Your wrists laden with ample golden bracelets
Tickled the heart of all men
And occasionally your short skirt swayed in the wind.
You sang mostly obscene love songs
What a sexy neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Rumors had it that you were in love with that lad
And finally you were married to a man from Erzincan
I don’t know whether you still live with your first husband
Or whether you are in Erzincan of snowy mountaintops.
Let my heart recollect the long-forgotten days
Things that live in memory do not change by time
What a nice neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Is the sadness I feel
these sunny winter day
the longing to be somewhere else–
on the bridge in my Istanbul, say,
or with the workers in Adana
or in the Greek mountains or in China,
or beside her who no longer loves me?
Or is it a trick
of my liver,
has a dream put me in this state,
or is it loneliness again
or the fact
I’m pushing fifty?
The second chapter
of my sadness
will tiptoe out
and go the way it came–
if I can just finish this poem
or sleep a little better,
if I just get a letter
or some good news on the radio. . .
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris–and I don’t step aside–
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.
It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.
Cesar Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him,
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also
with a rope. These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads . . .
translated by Robert Bly & John Knoepfle
Being Present for the Moment
Website storys
Illustration, Concept Art & Comics/Manga
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
An online activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, standing on the right side of the history - for free Palestine.
A place where I post unscripted, unedited, soulless rants of a insomniac madman
Finding Inspiration
Off the wall, under the freeway, over the rainbow, nothin' but net.
A virtual cabaret of songs, stories and questionable life choices.
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet and author by accident.
At Least Trying Too
A Journey of Spiritual Significance
Life in islamic point of view
Through the view point of camera...
L'essenziale è invisibile e agli occhi e al cuore. Beccarlo è pura questione di culo
In Kate's World
Leonard Durso 