To remember is not always to go back to what was,
for memory holds seaweed dragging up
wonders,
alien objects that never floated.
A light racing through chasms
lights up earlier years I’ve never lived,
which I recall like yesterday.
About 1900
I was strolling in a Paris park . . . it was
enveloped in fog.
My dress was the same color as the mist.
The light was the same as now
after seventy years.
Now the brief storm is over
and through the pane I see people walk by
near this window so near the clouds.
A time that is not mine
seems to rain inside my eyes.
translated by Willis Barnstone
Written On a Leaf by an Anonymous Palace Woman
Since I entered the inner rooms
I haven’t seen the spring.
I write this poem on a fallen leaf
and send it out to a wandering man.
translated by Geoffrey Waters
Spring-Gazing Song by Hsüeh T’ao
Blossoms crowd the branches: too beautiful to endure.
Thinking of you, I break into bloom again.
One morning soon, my tears will mist the mirror.
I see the future, and I will not see.
translated by Carolyn Kizer
Sunday morning breakfast in Moda
there’s nothing
quite so satisfying
as a bowl
of fresh figs
a glass of ice water
and the time
to enjoy them
untitled poem by Leila Miccolis
I wanted to see you,
thighs showing
(as I see hairs on your chest
through your silk shirt),
walking in the street
through whistles and goosing,
looking around
as if you see nothing.
As you sit down
you hike up your pants.
Your drawers match your tie.
translated by Willis Barnstone & Nelson Cerqueira
To Tzu-an by Yü Hsüan-chi
Parting, a thousand cups won’t wash away the sorrow.
Separation is a hundred knots I can’t untie.
After a thaw, orchids bloom, spring returns,
Willows catch on pleasure boats again.
We meet and part, like the clouds, never fixed.
I’ve learned that love is like the river.
We won’t meet again this spring,
But I can’t rest yet, winesick in Jade Tower.
translated by Geoffrey Waters
Till Death Do Us Part by Leila Miccolis
My desire for revenge, the bitterness,
repression of everything, goes
out of my mind
as I start to rub your loose organ
with the tip of my toes.
translated by Willis Barnstone & Nelson Carqueira
Cleopatra by Anna Akhmatova
She had already kissed Anthony’s dead lips,
she had already wept on her knees before Caesar . . .
And her servants have betrayed her. Darkness falls.
The trumpets of the Roman eagle scream.
And in comes the last man to be ravished by her beauty—
such a tall gallant!—with a shamefaced whisper:
“You must walk before him, as a slave, in the triumph.”
But the slope of her swan’s neck is tranquil as ever.
Tomorrow they’ll put her children in chains. Nothing
remains except to tease this fellow out of mind
and put the black snake, like a parting act of pity,
on her dark breast with indifferent hand.
translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
At the End of Spring by Yü Hsüan-chi
Deep lane, poor families; I have few friends.
He stayed behind only in my dream.
Fragrant silk scents the breeze: whose party?
A song comes carried in the wind: from where?
Drums in the street wake me at dawn.
In the courtyard, magpies mourn a spoiled spring.
How do we get the life we want?
I am a loosed boat floating a thousand miles.
translated by Geoffrey Waters
Itself Now by Mark Strand
They will say it is feeling or mood, or the world, or the sound
The world makes on summer night while everyone sleeps—
Trees awash with wind, something like that, something
As imprecise. But don’t be fooled. The world
Is only a mirror returning its image. They will say
It is about particulars, making a case for this or that,
But it tries only to be itself. The low hills, the freshets,
The long dresses, even the lyre and dulcimer mean nothing.
The music it makes is mainly its own. So far
From what it might be, İt always turns into longing,
Spinning itself out for desire’s sake, desire for its own end,
one word after another erasing the world and leaving instead
The invisible lines of its calling: Out there, out there.
Leonard Durso 