we’re hopeful migrants
we pitch our tents in the open
now open your arms
a bird multiples in air
we’re a raised voice
we rise with our eyelashes wet
put your arms around me
it’s love that rears the day
our eyes and brows cast down
walk now through roses, sweat
(windows broken
you can’t take me away from sorrow
it’s only for you that I cry)
a bird multiples in air
my eyes overrun my eyes
I’d have been as mute as stone, but for you
translated by George Messo
Morning in Maduray by Perihan Mağden
Didn’t I tell you
Not to open your mouth
Not to swallow birds
Their wings flap inside
And tire you
They’re woken before dawn
On trains
The bags under your eyes grow bigger
Listening to songs in temples
You unwind
translated by George Messo
I Conquer the Universe with Words by Nizar Kabbani
I conquer the universe with words.
I ravish the mother tongue,
The syntax, the grammar,
The verbs, and the nouns,
I violate the virginity of things
And form another language
That conceals the secret of fire
And the secret of water.
I illuminate the coming age
And stop the time in your eyes,
Erasing the line that separates
This moment from the years.
translated by Bassam K. Frangieh & Clementina R. Brown
The Talk of Her Hands by Nizar Kabbani
Keep silent,
The most beautiful voice
Is the talk of your hands
On the table.
translated by Bassam K. Frangieh & Clementina R. Brown
from The Book of Love 2 by Nizar Kabbani
Oh, my love,
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
And sleep in my eyes.
translated by Bassam K. Frangieh & Clementina R. Brown
from The Book of Love by Nizar Kabbani
Oh green bird,
As long as you are my love,
God is in the sky.
translaed by Bassam K. Frangieh & Clementina R. Brown
poem 55 by Nizar Kabbani
Why do you ask me to write you?
Why do you ask me
To undress in front of you
Like a primitive man?
Only writing undresses me.
When I speak
I keep my clothes on.
When I write
I become free and light
Like a weightless legendary bird.
When I write,
I separate from history
From the earth’s gravity,
I turn like a planet
In the space of your eyes.
translated by Bassam K. Frangieh & Clementina R. Brown
from Songs for a Woman: 4 by Yehuda Amichai
When you smile
serious ideas suddenly get drowsy
all night the mountains keep silent at your side—
at morning, the sand goes out with you, to sea
when you do nice things to me
all heavy industry shuts down.
translated by David Rosenberg
An Old Toolshed by Yehuda Amichai
What’s this? This is an old toolshed.
No, this is a great past love.
Anxiety and Joy were here together
in this darkness
and Hope.
Perhaps I’ve been here once before.
I didn’t go near to find out.
These are the voices calling out of a dream.
No, this is a great love.
No, this is an old toolshed.
translated by Yehuda Amichai & Ted Hughes
poem by Louis Simpson
As birds are fitted to the boughs
That blossom on the tree
And whisper when the south wind blows–
So was my love to me.
And still she blossoms in my mind
And whispers softly, though
The clouds are fitted to the wind,
The wind is to the snow.
Leonard Durso 