poetry

Sadness by Nazim Hikmet

/ zdunno03 / 3 Comments

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

Black Stone Lying On A White Stone by Cesar Vallejo

/ zdunno03 / 3 Comments

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

Your Hands by Pablo Neruda

/ zdunno03 / 10 Comments

When your hands go out,
love, toward mine,
what do they bring me flying?
Why do they stop
at my mouth, suddenly,
why do I recognize them
as if then, before,
I had touched them,
as if before they existed
they had passed over
my forehead, my waist?

Their softness came
flying over time,
over the sea, over the smoke,
over the spring,
and when you placed
your hands on my chest,
I recognized those golden
dove wings,
I recognized that clay
and that color of wheat.

All the years of my life
I walked around looking for them.
I went up the stairs,
I crossed the roads,
trains carried me,
waters brought me,
and in the skin of the grapes
I thought I touched you.
The wood suddenly
brought me your touch,
the almond announced to me
your secret softness,
until your hands
closed on my chest
and there like two wings
they ended their journey.

translated by Donald D. Walsh