TAARLO
Herman De Coninck
We walk, the two of us, through the autumn day.
And in spring too I feel no different.
We
...
TABLES
Ruth Lasters
Tables, sometimes I wish
masses of them would suddenly be turned
upside down and that
...
TAIGA
Rami Saari
Homes peeled from the riverbank
are swept away just like that.
It’s not a movie, my
...
TAKE AND READ
Stefan Hertmans
You can study history,
Riddles, rumours and gossip,
Pages of crazy electronics,
...
TAKE ME UNDER YOUR WING
Chaim Nachman Bialik
Take me under your wing,
be my mother, my sister.
Take my head to your breast,
my banished
...
TAKE MY HANDS
Ajmer Rode
Take my two hands
make eight feet of them
give them to the spider I
soaked in hot
...
TAKE THE GARDEN SNAIL
Tomas Lieske
Is it edible then, like its satisfied kin?
Is it also killed by salt, before the seasoned
...
TAKEOFF
Najwan Darwish
You take off from the earth
but can’t help falling back again
You’ll
...
TALAVÉRA
William Cliff
Vanguelis sat in the abject posture
of a worn-out animal with his legs splayed out
...
TALE
Michel Deguy
One evening as we were wearing a single belt
You whispered a tale in my ear of
...
TALES OF UP TO 15
Jean-Michel Espitallier
Tale of up to 15 (truncated version)
1 (one), 2 (two), 3 (three), 4 (four), 5 (five), 6 (six),
...
TALK AT TWILIGHT
Srečko Kosovel
Our windows are barred.
White barricades.
The American Indians know nothing
of
...
TALL STOREYS
Celia de Fréine
Angela is glad she remembered her flippers.
And her black catsuit comes in handy.
At first
...
TAMBURLAINE
Fernando Denis
Fire wounds the deserts, their sands of memory.
Over this infinite, burning house only the
...
TAMIL LIFE
Manushya Puthiran
The doorbells
don’t work
but no one goes away.
These one-and-a-half years
...
TAPS ON THE WINDOW TONIGHT
Batsheva Dori-Carlier
Like rain my father returns from the other side.
At the vacant guest seat,
I set an
...
TARZAN IN EXILE
Derry O’Sullivan
Why was I dry-eyed
The day I buried Dad
But two seasons later
I almost died
...
TASTE
Shuntaro Tanikawa
There is
no authority
anywhere
only
exposed
genitals
...
TATTERS
Shuntaro Tanikawa
before daybreak
Poem
came to me
robed in
tattered
...
TATTOO
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
My body is a palimpsest
under your hands,
a papyrus scroll
unfurled beneath you,
...
TATTOO
Mordechai Geldman
On the bus across from me
sits a handsome dude
a Japanese letter tattooed on his
...
TAXI
Piedad Bonnet
Everything so unremarkable so apparently simple
the irate Friday noon with its buzz of a fly in
...
TEA-BAG
Jan Wagner
I
draped only in a
sackcloth mantle. the little
hermit in his cave.
...
TEACHINGS OF THE SUN
Fredy Chicangana
And the sun came in softly through the roof of the house
until it reached the center of a
...
TEARS
Jūkichi Yagi
Because I felt bored,
I was standing in the bright sunlight
shedding
...
TELEFUNKEN
Menno Wigman
From years of toiling I went colour-blind,
emitted sparks, was thumped, gave up the ghost.
...
TELEMACHUS BY ODYSSEUS’ GRAVE
Sigitas Parulskis
You paraded about your victories so much that
you forgot that in this world you don’t have to
...
TELERTHEBA
Raoul Schrott
truss-work · a vault of ribs struts and pillars
pushing till the volcano breached the
...
TELEVISION
Angshuman Kar
1986
To see Maradona we purchased for the first time a Konark black-n-white, large,
...
TELL ME A TALE
Prathibha Nandakumar
Tell me a tale.
Let there be seven seas, thunderstorms,
fire-spitting dragons in it.
Let
...
TELL US MARX
Mallika Sengupta
She spun rhymes, wove blankets
The Dravidian woman who sowed wheat
In the Aryan man’s
...
TEMPORARY STOP
Erik Lindner
1. Is this a town? Houses and tram
touch the street quite
...
TEMPTATION
Mehrdad Arefani
Je t’aime because I love summer
Je t’aime licking ice cream
your beauty has killed me
...
TENEMENT
Justyna Bargielska
I'm annoyed by the windows in the house on the opposite shore
of the foaming street
...
TERM OF OFFICE
Israel Bar Kohav
For 15 years I served as a child until removed from my post
in this kingdom where the
...
TESTIMONY
Fernando Charry Lara
The eve of the crime the cobbled paving was
The afternoon,
The sun violently fallen towards
...
TEXTS
Raghavan Atholi
Waking up,
Sitting up with a yawn,
Rolling up the tattered mat,
Tucking up the
...
THANKS FOR COMING
Micha Hamel
‘Everybody knows that ugly people have feelings
too the same way that every gorgeous
...
THANKS FOR THE PLATE
Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen
thanks for everything you never get
and thanks for what you get it on
thanks for
...
THANKS GILLES DELEUZE
Abdel-ilah Salhi
They were quoting you
Murmuring your name like a prophet coming from afar
From whose
...
THAT DAY WAS A SUNDAY
Nilmani Phookan
That day was a Sunday
A stream of fresh blood from the butcher’s
Rolled over the street to
...
THAT EARLIEST OF ALL
Bei Dao
Day and night part at the top of a cypress
Wings draw in light’s final rays
Sailing in
...
THAT NIGHT
T. Carmi
She said that he was her sun,
that her light and her warmth and her goodness
came from
...
THAT THE WORLD WAS THERE
Jacques Roubaud
Falling asleep I saw the world was there,
the world and all that follows from it;
“now”
...
THAT WHICH REMAINS OF LOVE
Antonella Anedda
There was much in that dawn, in that hotel, in the paper
that revealed the hard water of the
...
THE LIPPIZANER
Edvard Kocbek
A newspaper reports:
the Lippizaners collaborated
on a historical film.
A radio explains:
...
THE 12TH COMMANDMENT
Goenawan Mohamad
I do not know what is said in the 12th commandment.
“Maybe something about the wind and the
...
THE ABSENT MAN
Shinjiro Kurahara
On a hill at the base of a mountain
stood an old temple dedicated to Kannon.
I paid a
...
THE ABYSS
Roni Margulies
I remember how a narrow beam of light
fell on my bed through the gap by the curtain,
...
THE ACCOUNTANT
Gerrit Komrij
Another man. He lays my chattels bare.
The time has come to tot up the accounts.
He
...
THE ACME STORE
Vincent Tholomé
(during this experiment john cage or his equivalent is to sit on a wooden chair where he will
...
THE ADOLESCENT
Tatsuji Miyoshi
With evening
A beautiful adolescent returns home
Leaving the monastery gate
He
...
THE ADORING GOD
Raúl Gómez Jattin
I am a god in my town and my valley
not because they adore me But because
...
THE ADVENTURE OF CONLAE
Aifric Mac Aodha
Two tales slice the heart: The Adventure of Conlae and Joyce’s ‘Eveline’.
Take Eveline
...
THE ADVOCATE
Gerrit Komrij
‘There is a dance-floor where the figures gather,’
Says Nathan. ‘Let me be your counsel
...
THE AIRPLANE
Dunya Mikhail
The airplane coming from Baghdad
carries American soldiers
and rises up
and up
...
THE ALIBI
Kiki Dimoula
Whenever I come to visit you
only the time that’s intervened
from one visit to the next
...
THE ALLOTTED SHADOW
Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
Night freed your eyes. The young woman with the shaved head threw the snails and read the dream of
...
THE ALUMINIUM BIRD
Mohamed Boudouik
A bird perched on the old family’s radio set
That brought news from Moscow
Where the snow
...
THE ANGEL OF ARTILLERY
Marko Pogačar
I wondered how we were going to survive the night.
the ride was smooth and the
...
THE ANGEL’S WHISTLING
Mohamed Al-Harthy
Who are you reflected in the verse?
Its beginning
or its end
on the flowing
...
THE ANGELS IN KARIS
Tua Forsström
Walk around in shoes
too thin for February
on the railroad station in Karis
...
THE ANIMAL CRUSADE
H.H. ter Balkt
One day all the sties and burrows opened
And out came the cave-bear the mammoth the
...
THE ANIMAL IS NOT AN ANIMAL
Jean-Michel Espitallier
The hibiscus is not an animal
The ingot is not an animal
The mascarpone is not an
...
THE ANTIPA MUSEUM
Daniel Bănulescu
I used to have a “little sister” a girlfriend
A cutie-pie who wanted to begin a
...
THE ANTS
H.H. ter Balkt
The ants moved into a house
right below ours;
our address did not become theirs:
...
THE ANTS’ ROAD
Constantin Abăluţă
Through my aunt’s house the ants’ road passes,
that ancient road mentioned in the
...
THE APOLLO YEARS
Roni Margulies
We’ve brought 20 kilos of moonstone back.
They’re being analysed in detail
...
THE APPLES
Yves Bonnefoy
And what must we think
Of these yellow apples?
Yesterday, they astonished, waiting like
...
THE ASH TREE
Juan Cristóbal Romero
This tree, born from a seed,
now scrawny and with peeling bark,
once reached its arm to
...
THE ASHTRAY AND THE GIRL
Masayo Koike
The girl who takes a dose of youthful souls
Who doesn’t bow is still effective
The
...
THE ASPEN TREE
Guido Gezelle
White and green together heaves
The aspen all its glancing leaves.
Ever awake,
...
THE AUDIENCE
Eqrem Basha
The head of the protocol department asked
What are you involved in
We are tired I
...
THE AUTOPSY
Odysseus Elytis
And so they found that the gold of the olive root had dripped in the re-
cesses of his
...
THE AUTUMN OF EPICURUS
Eugenijus Ališanka
I shouldn’t complain, there was no lack of pleasures, maybe fewer women, more philosophy, but today
...
THE AVIATOR
Shota Iatashvili
He flew off and turned out to be right:
They praised him, blessed him, bent his neck down.
...
THE AXE
Lennart Sjögren
It’s getting dark
and the footsteps like so much else
sink below the
...
THE BADAIN JARAN DESERT
Qin Xiaoyu
The old road is buried, the new one easily blown away.
So jeep, my boozy buddy, let’s
...
THE BAKER AND I
Fernando Linero
What I do is as important as what the baker does, who has the sacred duty of making the first food
...
THE BALLAD OF PERRY SMITH
Mario Rivero
At 1:19 in the morning of Wednesday
the 14th of April 1965
Perry Smith the little one
...
THE BALLAD OF SLOWNESS
Herman De Coninck
I love the slowness of lying on grass, like a king:
me, looking out and surveying my
...
THE BALUSTRADE
Vahe Arsen
Now the river can be seen
beyond the railings,
both balustrade
and river emerge
...
THE BARBARIANS (ROUND TWO)
Amir Or
It was not in vain that we awaited the barbarians,
it was not in vain that we gathered in the
...
THE BARD
Varavara Rao
When the order is amiss
And billowing pitch-clouds of time
Strangle the throat
...
THE BASICS
Mustafa Stitou
We keep on fighting until we hear the grass growing.
Clouds hum through the sky. We hang our
...
THE BED
Shuntaro Tanikawa
The woman is asleep
another one is also perhaps
in pain, having reverted to being a
...
THE BED
Hadas Gilad
There was light above the bed in the blue room
the bed that dreamed it was surrounded by
...
THE BEE-KEEPER
István Kemény
I have been a bee-keeper for six thousand years
And for the past hundred years an
...
THE BEER BOTTLE-TOP
Yu Jian
unsure how to address it it was still sitting at the head of the table only
...
THE BEGINNING
Vito Apüshana (Miguel Ángel López)
In the beginning there was a giant
and fertile silence . . . from which flowed
bubbles
...
THE BIG SNOW
Yves Bonnefoy
First snow early this morning. The ochre, the green
Take refuge under the trees.
...
THE BIRD
Hiroshi Kawasaki
I want to sing of the bird
In a most fundamental way
First, his beak
His wings
...
THE BIRD
Hiroshi Kawasaki
The bird
Throws me a quick glance
And then
He pushes off from the branch
Right
...
THE BIRD
Hiroshi Kawasaki
That bird
When he beats his wings
The sky flies
Before he takes off
When he
...
THE BIRD
Hiroshi Kawasaki
The sky flies the bird close in
It flies him far away
It erases the poppy-seed speck of
...
THE BIRD KING
Mischa Andriessen
It’s usually young men, almost boys.
They leave their homes in spring
no time to
...
THE BIRD WATCHER
Han Lynn
In this loka, a person is bound
to be smitten by an insect, at least once.
People
...
THE BIRDS ARE DEAD NOW
Fang Xianhai
I like reading books of poems
on my travels
and in places where people pile up
...
THE BLACK ROOM
Zhai Yongming
all crows are black-hearted
I’m feeling timid: they have so many
relatives, the numbers are
...
THE BLOOD CEREMONIES
Santiago Mutis Durán
A lacerating anger illumines
my first days like a fever
An imbecile herd of teachers
tore
...
THE BLUENESS OF EVENING
Hassan Najmi
I desire other places to see you
Grass to rest on
And thirsty tongue
To drink with and to
...
THE BLUSHING BEAST
Tomas Lieske
Could I live without him then?
Did not my body fill itself each time he came
with
...
THE BONSAI CATS
Rami Saari
In an e-mail from the secretary
of the linguistics department
I heard about the bonsai
...
THE BOOK OF WATER
Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
I will never stop pursuing you, sacred delirium. Not even when the peace of the unjust comes. Nor
...
THE BOTTLE AT SEA
Maurice Gilliams
The bleak profusion of the blood
brought mind and gut no stable stock.
We are created
...
THE BOWLS
Stefan Hertmans
She the fruit, he the beast.
He keeps the liver separate,
Because blood spills from the
...
THE BRIDGE
Lêdo Ivo
So we could cross the river filled with stones
someone, with an ax, went up into the forest
...
THE BROCADE BORDER
Kanaka Ha. Ma.
Tell me, how can a brocade sari
without an embellished border
be beautiful?
Isn’t
...
THE BROKEN DOLL
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
O little broken doll, dropped in the well,
thrown aside by a child, scampering downhill
...
THE BULL YEAR
Rosa Jamali
1
The mouse is a sharp vessel of me singing
The tigers are mute
Their claws
...
THE BURNING FIRE
Áine Uí Fhoghlú
Skin like ebony against
bright cotton cloth
on the clean single bed
there are
...
THE CALVES ARE EVERYWHERE
Gudugwe Mlilo
The Reverend Shepstone? Really!
The fence consumes the gourds!
They dip with their
...
THE CANARY
Miltos Sachtouris
They placed him there where the wind blows most wild
they pledged him to the bitter frosts
...
THE CANARY
Tal Nitzán
We’ll move the canary from the kitchen to the bath
we’ll move the computer from the terrace to
...
THE CANE
Damir Šodan
I wonder whether I’ll ever have a cane
that blind men old men gentlemen use
a cane I can test
...
THE CAPTAIN’S FINAL VOYAGE
Julián Malatesta
The day is a ship
Guided by the light.
On the prow, the captain says goodbye to all the
...
THE CAPTURE OF SYRINX
Aifric Mac Aodha
Shivering light
On the even lake
The moon breaks
From its certain shape.
...
THE CARYATID
Halyna Petrosanyak
No support for the thin wrists and silken
reach of her upper arms.
Shoulders of the most
...
THE CATHEDRAL OF DEATH
Hassan El Ouazzani
I’m not concerned with the bloodiest wars of the world
I’m not bound to its decline towards
...
THE CENTRAL GOD
Admiel Kosman
The central god is passing through our neighborhood now.
He’ll heal everyone, fix
...
THE CHANNEL OF THE NORTH
Jan Baeke
An ideal spot for history is difficult to find.
The radio reports that traffic was severely
...
THE CHANT FREEDOM
Banira Giri
temple free me
from the sounds of bell and conch
sky free me
from electric
...
THE CHILDREN
Paulo Teixeira
These children wouldn’t have wanted to be born.
They skate over the ice deep into the
...
THE CHRISTIAN COMES TO VISIT
Nachoem M. Wijnberg
My grandfather is in his garden when the Christian comes to visit.
He can see how well his
...
THE CIRCUS OF OURS
Gabriele Frasca
it might be the flesh with its sizzling
or the muffled thud with which breath lies down
...
THE CITY
Eddy Van Vliet
The city is covered with places you
took from me. Full of joint
footsteps, full of
...
THE CITY OF VIOLINMAKERS
Henrik Nordbrandt
Every time that you return
I could kill you for it –
out of envy at the view
I never
...
THE CITY WAS SPARKLING
Tua Forsström
The city was sparkling at a distance, and
I stopped. Everything looked so beautiful,
the
...
THE CITY, FROM THE CITY
Michèle Métail
winter leafless
rising up between
walls, a triangle
dark angles where
thick
...
THE CLASS EXCURSION
Ann Cotten
I feel complicity
when standing by smart art
I am not always funny
then I fart.
...
THE CLAY CHOOSES A MAN
Héctor Rojas Herazo
The clay chooses a man, it points at him and matures him,
it gives him his splendor and his
...
THE CLOCK CELL
Rosa Jamali
Something dies accidentally
And the sunlight which has soaked it is wet and obscure
If I
...
THE COFFEE-MILL
Vasco Graça Moura
the coffee-mill shows up in various
cubist paintings, along with the bottle, the
newspaper
...
THE COLD AND THE HEAT
Israel Pincas
1
It was impossible to hold onto anything.
I didn’t even embrace my mother as one
...
THE COLLECTION
Avoth Yeshurun
I bring everything I find.
Not everything that glitters is gold.
But I pick
...
THE COLLECTOR
Esther Jansma
This was not found in some attic but down
at rock bottom, like things left after
a modern
...
THE COLLECTOR
Eva Durán
I like waiting for you in the afternoon
Tightening my corset
Moistening myself inside
...
THE CONSPIRACY
Ramsey Nasr
science laugh it off
but it’s only natural
for crying out loud
it’s never clicked between
...
THE CONVERT
Antero de Quental
Among the sons of an accursed century
I took my place at the irreverent table,
Where still
...
THE COURTYARD
Eddy Van Vliet
In the courtyard where the cooing of pigeons
was all too easily predictable,
I heard a
...
THE COW
Nitin Mehta
stands in the middle of the road.
From between her horns
the waxing crescent
shines with
...
THE CROSSING
Stefan Hertmans
It is those eyes in the shadow
That have been read to death.
Truth is a threatening
...
THE CURSE
Kanaka Ha. Ma.
Scrubbed hands, feet, face
And went to bed —
A small feather on the bed
Picked it
...
THE CURVE
Nilim Kumar
All the beautiful curves
of this world are dangerous
Come, let us alight
...
THE DAGGER
Rogi Wieg
Zeus, when I am old and sick,
I don’t want to do Christmas pieces.
So have my carotid
...
THE DAY
Gerrit Kouwenaar
The day I was there the clocks stood at seven
the neighbors on the balcony talked about
...
THE DAY OF NAMING
Varavara Rao
1
Can the empire acquiesce
If insurrection makes
The vagrant and
...
THE DAYBRIGHT SHADOW
Eldrid Lunden
Halvdan Egedius only reached the age of 22. From
my garden I can see the same hills in the
...
THE DAZE OF DEATH
Srečko Kosovel
It is silent, it is dead, grey.
People flutter
from one stone to another.
Tired of
...
THE DEAD
Christine D’haen
Foaming green foliage, brown earth, mountains, water,
the sky grey or blue and multicoloured
...
THE DEATH OF ARAFAT
Yi Sha
“I’m fed up with this seeming immortal
who looks like a leper
who as soon as he makes an
...
THE DEATH OF DIANA
Zhai Yongming
I’ve written several lines not quite to the point
on the
...
THE DEATH OF MY MOTHER
T. Carmi
The nurse told me:
go away.
There are things a person doesn’t forget
all his
...
THE DEBT
Luiza Neto Jorge
Alive in the dagger’s instantaneous lip
in the daily arrested hour
The debts grow they’re
...
THE DECAPITATED POET
Ahmed Joumari
One day, the faint-hearted chamberlain
Came to Fayrouz Shah,
Ruler of lands and men’s
...
THE DEER
Tomaž Šalamun
Awe-inspiring cliff, white desire,
water springing forth from blood,
let my form
...
THE DEER AND THE ARMOUR
Orietta Lozano
I am the red and dirty
war she said,
the boiling cauldron,
sadness, the desolate
...
THE DEERS' ASHES
Álvaro Marín
The blue planet . . .
And who stirs the fire of its volcanoes?
The planet of water . .
...
THE DELIGHT OF DEADLOCK
Szabolcs Várady
Lines of verse shift only within the head,
as one voice fades, it moves out of the way,
...
THE DEMON
Titos Patríkios
Out of the body emerges the demon
out of the body extend
tentacles which grapple towards the
...
THE DESK
Yael Globerman
Unlike Icarus, I am learning
to fly on my feet. Sometimes on all fours.
Still, the
...
THE DHOBI AND THE DHOTI
K. G. Sankara Pillai
My dhoti had a red border.
The dhobi used to grumble:
Every time I wash it
The whole
...
THE DIGITAL TREE
Armando Romero
This was a man whose right hand had been buried
who would spend his days in an empty
...
THE DISCIPLE
Monika Rinck
an obstinate disciple, so youthful
but the one whom jesus loved
who laid beside him at the
...
THE DITCH
Yukio Tsuji
With one leg in the ditch
a kidnapper,
too busy cleaning the ditch
to kidnap,
...
THE DOCTOR
Hédi Kaddour
In the circular courtyard, trees
Turn yellow, a madwoman in restraints
Watches them;
...
THE DOGS (8)
Jan Baeke
Words like coffee, sun and car
don’t wear as easily in use
as beauty,
...
THE DOGS OF KHAO LAK
Steinar Opstad
The dogs sensed the wave
and bounded up the mountainsides
Thousands of people died
...
THE DOG'S EATING YOUR HAT
Justyna Bargielska
Honestly? I think you don't know what yearning is.
Has your daughter ever told you
...
THE DOMAIN OF HAVOC
Eugenia Sánchez Nieto
A naked man walks under the rain
in the silence of his house he writes the last book
...
THE DOMINO PLAYERS
Barbara Köhler
a game with the eyes a game with the hands
the talk of gestures tied to the net of glances
...
THE DONKEY CONNECTION
Mario Suško
the mustiness of the wooden frame
floating slowly into my nostrils
on this humid
...
THE DOOMED
Nazih Abou Afach
It is not because I’m scared, nor pessimistic, nor have a coward’s heart,
But, whenever I’m
...
THE DOUBLE
Mario Rivero
A misty brown-skinned young man
came and lay down at my side and looked at me
and I looked at
...
THE DOUBLE
Raúl Henao
There is a card player seated
on the edge of my bed
Until I decide
...
THE DOVE
Miltos Sachtouris
The dove would pass this way
they’d lit torches all round in the streets
others kept
...
THE DREAM OF FISHES
Lêdo Ivo
I cannot accept that dreams
are the privilege of human beings alone.
Fish also dream.
...
THE DREAM OF LANGUAGE
Luís Quintais
You’ll write about the subjection of animals.
But not today. Remember how the panther
still
...
THE DREAM OF THE MOTHER
Stefano Dal Bianco
If you are watching a mother sleeping in an armchair
on any winter afternoon siesta
...
THE DRUM
Anna Enquist
We do hear it, the drum in the distance,
but don’t listen. The rhythm of the sticks
...
THE EAGLE
Armando Orozco Tovar
His hands full of crows destroyed all
His thought was an absurd stairway
Like dreams on
...
THE EAR
Mario Suško
Virgo aurus I send to you, my Lord,
in this hand made Kenneth Cole case;
my faith I place
...
THE EARTH’S APPOINTMENT
Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
He had everything until the word arrived.
During the vigil I knew the blue cry. I tried
...
THE EBONY ADONIS
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
At puberty I had a dream
in my all-too-single bunk in the school dorm,
of dancing the
...
THE ECONOMY
Rin Ishigaki
The phrase ‘economic animal’
I suppose is already fairly old.
Quite a gap exists
...
THE EGG
Christophe Tarkos
This is the story of a chicken that is no bigger than an egg. She grew normally until she was the
...
THE EGGSHELL
Tomas Lieske
He bears the shell of his happiness
and walks across the world. He’s been dissuaded from
...
THE EMBERA WOMAN
Armando Orozco Tovar
Every day I cross this sidewalk
and God is not there,
only the Embera woman.
...
THE EMBRACE
Valerio Magrelli
As you rest beside me, I lean over
and by your face I catch hold of sleep
the way one
...
THE END OF NAIVETE
Yonatan Berg
Things were different. We did not sit
in the presence of holy ones. Instead,
...
THE END OF POETRY
Rafi Weichert
I recently met a few poets who hinted that they’ve lost the spirit of poetry. One
...
THE END OF SUMMER
Kiji Kutani
As I stared helplessly
at the reflection of my own face
in the large curved bowl
at
...
THE END OF THE JOURNEY
Masayo Koike
When we returned from the trip
His
Face indicated that something had ended
The trip
...
THE ENDING OF A LETTER
Hrvoje Pejakovic
In one of the years to come we are going to be obliged to die, maybe
even grow up. (Don’t lock
...
THE ENGLISHMAN
Frank Koenegracht
For Geeske
You were asleep, dreaming, smiled and said:
‘No I don’t care,’
...
THE ENGRAVER
Cecilie Løveid
Once we could interpret all signs
It was not a dream, but resembling one.
We were
...
THE ENTRY INTO ADULTHOOD
Szabolcs Várady
You’re in pyjamas, wearing your winter coat,
you stand in an unfamiliar bathroom
that’s
...
THE EPHEMERA
Giampiero Neri
They fly over the currents
of an invisible ocean
that one takes for infinite,
...
THE ETHIOPIAN SON
Martín Gambarotta
/
They don’t want to see you spin
a globe at full speed
to stop it dead
...
THE ÉTUDES
Jan Wagner
forgive me, maestra, but i hated you
and your piano, the carpet-smoth-
ered wednesday
...
THE ETYMOLOGY OF NEARNESS
Branko Čegec
The street was empty when with a gloomy laughter
I stopped the progression of transience and
...
THE EVENING DRAWS NEAR
Mark Boog
The evening draws near; I lay myself out.
Solace is sought in preservative wine
and
...
THE EVENING STAR
Porfirio Barba Jacob
A blue mount, a wandering bird,
an oak tree, a prairie,
a boy, a song… And, all the
...
THE EXCOMMUNICATED
Ashok Vajpeyi
From the heap of names, future and dried-up leaves
growing despair and incongruous childhood
...
THE EXCUSE
Ifor ap Glyn
Here in Majdanek,
in the normalised hell of Majdanek,
whose chimneys have long since
...
THE EXHAUSTED PEOPLE
Wadih Sa’adeh
The exhausted people were sitting in the square
listening to the soft winds which may have
...
THE EXILE’S RETURN
Slavko Mihalic
He’s now the ruler of the country which once exiled him,
He’s not a king or the
...
THE EXILED
Hassan Najmi
to Abbas
Their palms are coffins
And their heads are hats for distant clouds.
...
THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Rajendra Bhandari
Abandoning ancestral homelands of meaning
words find new shelter.
From lisping and
...
THE EYE
Lennart Sjögren
Take the dead creature’s head
in your hand
from your own head take out
the
...
THE EYES OF OTHERS
Umar Timol
She’s a young woman living in a village in a distant country,
she’s just got
...
THE FACE OF IVO
Aase Berg
Ivo can climb gloom-blue up through the dimensions in the girders of the highest Ferris Tower
...
THE FAIR
Hédi Kaddour
We came back from the pine woods
And greeted, as we passed, the cook
Who had retired
...
THE FAIRYTALE RECORD
Marcel Beyer
First it’s the goodbyes, the excursion, the label.
First it’s the morning, the squeeze of
...
THE FAMILIAR
Udaya Narayana Singh
As I read your body
page after page
the plot seems familiar;
as though it’s my own
...
THE FAMILY IS DESTROYED
Chirikure Chirikure
Just listen to yourselves talking –
The family is no more!
So, the family
...
THE FATE OF CLOTHES
Rui Lage
In the laundry hamper
of any bedroom in the world
a mother would recognize them.
...
THE FATHER
Armando
Was there a way to disappear, was
there a wait, a long wait,
patience and killing
...
THE FEAST OF LAZARUS
Kiki Dimoula
Day’s dull drizzle.
Some foolish bells splash
Lazarus’ sleep to bring him forth.
...
THE FIELD
Efrat Mishori
The field’s owner observes it with a wise, somewhat distant eye,
Gathering its edges
Within
...
THE FIELD
Solomon Ibn Gabirol
The storm-clouds lowed above us like bulls.
Autumn was angry, and its face darkened
and
...
THE FIELDS ARE EMPTY
Ruy Cinatti
The fields are empty
Where at another time villages used to flourish,
And echoes of
...
THE FIG
Nurit Zarchi
That very morning after the guests said,
“Your branches are as splendid as paradise,”
the
...
THE FIGHT
Ion Mureşan
“I was like a brother to you, you pig,
I brought you flowers when you got married,
I was
...
THE FINAL JUDGEMENT
Kawa Niangji ལགས་ཀྱི་ཟིན་བྲིས།
I'm waiting for the doomsday,
for things to become nothing.
When a big bang bangs
...
THE FINE GRAIN OF MY DAYS
Vasant Abaji Dahake
Through this evening’s window,
through tranquil eyes I watch
on the far road a scene of
...
THE FIRST ENCOUNTER
Uwe Kolbe
Aimless he wandered, that wide-eyed boy
beneath the scorching sun the gods controlled.
He
...
THE FIRST MAN ON THE MOON
C. (Cornelis) Buddingh’
now i’ve been here a week. a year, a day –
seen all there is to be seen: dust,
...
THE FIRST NOISE
Álvaro Marín
No, it is not the intonation
It is not the rhythm
Not even the meaning.
It is the
...
THE FIRST PAINTING
Shai Dotan
How did God mark
Cain’s forehead?
With Abel’s distorted lips
turning skyward?
...
THE FIRST TIME
Remco Campert
The first time
it was at your place we went back to
the last tram was wailing round the
...
THE FISH TOO
K. Michel
If you stood the Royal Pond in The Hague on end
upright like a majestic wall of water
to
...
THE FISHMONGER
S. Joseph
The fishmonger was washing the vessel
In the running water of the tiny stream.
The screw
...
THE FIVE ELEMENTS
Geet Chaturvedi
From my body, take earth and sprinkle on barren lands
From my body, take water and
...
THE FLAG-BEARER
Rajendra Kishore Panda
In my hand are flags of different colours,
different signs.
If someone’s is a sign of
...
THE FLEETING MOMENT
Kiyoko Nagase
The fleeting moment when my poetry forms
the fleeting moment I love
the fleeting moment
...
THE FLINTSTONE
Rosa Jamali
BLOCK 1
They bargain over a rough stone terribly indebted to you
It’s not clear
...
THE FLOWER GIRL
Ruxandra Cesereanu
I think you’re the death who will come disguised as a man
because death can only be a
...
THE FLOWERING STONE
Luis Eduardo Rendón
Let’s be attentive because a stone will flower
a song will flower and kings will demand
...
THE FLOWERING TREE
Meira Delmar
Against the blue of the sky – the sky so clean
that seems to be washed by the hands of God
...
THE FLOWERS OF LOVE
Tarannum Riyaz
If you should leave me now and go away
the world will not come to an end
the gift of life is
...
THE FLUTIST
Sharron Hass
I’m embarrassed to say it –
if you don’t call I’ll die. I am
embarrassed to
...
THE FLYING KITES
André Schmitz
These are the souls that are put on earth
and these are the bodies that rise to the sky
...
THE FLYING NIGHTDRESS
Mandakranta Sen
The neighbourhood was talking in its sleep
With the rock of night on its head
The
...
THE FOREST
Rati Amaghlobeli
This forest is thick, but it’s light,
Like a temple, like Athens city.
In the
...
THE FOREST OF DECEPTIONS
Ouidad Benmoussa
1
There were countless deceptions in the notebook of life:
A radio transmits
...
THE FOUR SEASONS
Hassan Najmi
Roses side by side .
They do not speak to each other .
And these seasons alternate
...
THE FOUR SQUARES OF HIS HEART
Tarannum Riyaz
In one square of his heart there is his ten-year-old love for me
in another, is his two-year-old
...
THE FOURTH
Jan Lauwereyns
The man kept searching with no courage with no strength
with just his dumb mutt just his
...
THE FOURTH PERSON SINGULAR
Henk van der Waal
why should they not be with you, those few words of a bequest that
make the mouth brackish:
...
THE FRAGMENT
Stefano Dal Bianco
One evening, I was late, with a towel, inadvertently, I knocked over a precious bottle
of
...
THE FRIEND
Héctor Rojas Herazo
Suddenly he looked at me,
more solitary than anyone.
He looked at me with his eyes and his
...
THE FRIENDS
Mario Rivero
Sometimes I ask myself what became of my friends
after all these days
that have let fall
...
THE FUNGUS
Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih
Where I live
it is cold and dark inside.
So cold you never know
how warm the day
...
THE GAMBLER
Abdel-ilah Salhi
All roads lead to this moment
You apologize to your guest excusing yourself with something
...
THE GAME OF QUOITS
Ruy Belo
In this square my childhood resurrects
here my life suddenly has a new wellspring
and surges
...
THE GARDEN
Miltos Sachtouris
It smelled of fever
that was no garden
some strange couples were walking inside
...
THE GARDEN
Abdelkarim Tabbal
Once this green grass
spoke love to me
whispered to me inside my feet
and so I fell in the
...
THE GARDEN
Yves Bonnefoy
It’s snowing.
Under the snowflakes the gate
Finally opens to the garden
Of
...
THE GAS MASK
Linda Maria Baros
As far as you,
the stairmakers collapse in places
gazing far into the horizon,
...
THE GEM
Yanko González
carefully responds “well said” when you insult him. makes faces when you tell him about
...
THE GIFT
K. Schippers
Give me what you have on you.
Neither keys nor money.
Make it something temporary.
...
THE GLASSES
Stefan Hertmans
Picking red currants
On an empty day,
Black clouds, a windy afternoon,
Her
...
THE GLOVES OFF
Menno Wigman
We felt no ounce of pity for what died.
A slow procession, one last session:
...
THE GODS AT THE A&P
Gerhard Falkner
Year after year, if memory serves me well,
shortly before sunset we would fall under
...
THE GOLDEN AGE
Zvonko Maković
what is your habitat?
my habitat is an ashtray, a desk
a chair, a candlestick, books, boxes.
...
THE GOLDEN AGE
Nuno Júdice
A curve in time, like a curve in a road,
veers man from his old way. The landscape
...
THE GOLDEN JUBILEE
Basudev Sunani
Gandhi,
An attentive oil painting
Ideal for the drawing room.
Nehru, Subhash,
...
THE GOOD-BYE
Davide Rondoni
Then the heart becomes silent
and all the clamouring, the surprised
faintings, and these
...
THE GOODBYE ROCK
Juan Manuel Roca
And all these men who are dancing,
Are they going to die? Yeah!
And the barbarians who
...
THE GRANDDAD I NEVER HAD
Ellen Deckwitz
My grandfather gives me a tour
of his urn, takes my coat and hangs
it up next to the
...
THE GRECIAN
Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
who with satchel cared for mystery
with rucksack and eighteen
enlightened by retsina
...
THE GREEKS
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
To the gods we attributed a dazzling existence
Consubstantial with the sea the clouds trees and
...
THE GUAMO TREE
Alberto Vélez
Dawn breaks. On the dew-bathed
Guamo tree a blackbird sings.
Taste of time in that
...
THE GYMNAST
Héctor Rojas Herazo
In the brief fortune
the myth of your wings
the order, the grace and the energy of your
...
THE HAIL FELL
Tatsuji Miyoshi
Here is the place where your eyes rested
Upon the sparrows flitting through the pine boughs
...
THE HAND AND THE PAGE
Norddine Zouitni
In the next room
Five ghosts are staying up late:
The eldest is Irish, a character
...
THE HANDSOME BAKER
Jan Glas
A frozen loaf of bread, I once read somewhere,
can best be defrosted in a dark place.
...
THE HAPPY ENDING
Anneke Brassinga
What on earth are we doing here, we do not
ask ourselves as long as the jigging of tunes
...
THE HARE CHASE
Vasant Abaji Dahake
Staves batter my dreams
and I wake up,
wiping oaths from my face.
So this
...
THE HARE-MAN
Lennart Sjögren
Ever more often I think of the hares
how they fly across the fields
and when I
...
THE HEART ONE DAY
Jūkichi Yagi
The heart one day
became a mountain.
The heart one day
became the sky.
...
THE HEIGHT OF THE DWARF
Rajendra Kishore Panda
We know your game.
Nothing is above your head,
no one.
The planets, the
...
THE HERON
Liam Ó Muirthile
The heron, stock-still,
is her own bird image
in the water.
The surface doubles her
...
THE HIGHEST PLACE
Kedarnath Singh
When I got there
I was afraid.
People of my city
it is terrifying to discover
...
THE HILL OF THE DEAD
Volker Braun
Ceasar wathed from his tumulus
The distant sea battle Barbarian ships the maker of history
...
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
Lü De'an
the hippo's rising to the surface
we're all hoping it'll go on rising
once,
...
THE HISTORY OF PETERS
Jean-Michel Espitallier
- What are you up to Peter Jennings, Peter Dews, Peter Jackson, Peter Hain, what are you up to
...
THE HITCH
Mehrdad Fallah
Ego was caught up in a hitch
kept grappling with it
going up
gone down
...
THE HORIZONTAL SUN
Uroš Zupan
Slanting rain is falling from the sky. I cannot
split myself into different personalities and
...
THE HORN
P.P. Ramachandran
It kept on moaning.
No one took notice,
In the festival revelry.
The poor
...
THE HORSES
Tua Forsström
After spending a night
among horses I remember the fresh
smell of ammonia and
...
THE HOTEL MANAGER
Jan Glas
The hotel manager has left me.
I miss him so badly that it hurts.
I’ve got to
...
THE HOTTENTOT VENUS
Mordechai Geldman
In what chains they brought her to Paris
to exhibit the wonder of her great buttocks
...
THE HOUSE
Jorge Bustamante García
This is the house. The open windows
let in the light and a dim
duskiness hides in the
...
THE HOUSE AMONG THE OAKS
Héctor Rojas Herazo
A vague noise, a surprise in the wardrobes,
the house was ours even more, it searched for our
...
THE HOUSE OF THE WORLD
Luiza Neto Jorge
Sometimes what seems
to be a birthmark on one’s face
is the house of the world
is a
...
THE HOUSEWIFE
Ronelda Kamfer
auntie Doris was a typical housewife
dropping her kids off at school every morning
...
THE HUDSON SONNETS
Ramsey Nasr
I - hudson’s shortcut
our outcome was that you were in the way
we sailed to that
...
THE HUMAN SPECIES
William Cliff
human beings are mammals (for that’s the way
they style themselves among the taxonomic
...
THE HUNDREDTH SONG OF LOVE
Mazisi Kunene
When I came to my senses, sweetheart
I only recall the beaded pillows of poetry
A hundred
...
THE HYPOTHESES OF NO ONE
Juan Manuel Roca
It could be the wind.
The blank page. It could be.
It could be the one who’s coming
...
THE IDEAL WORLD
Ron Winkler
it all came down to the Samaritans of the nights that wanted to donate red sky
to the days.
...
THE INFECTION CARRIERESS
Cecilie Løveid
I work for the infection
I pass the infection on.
I pass the infection on to the king.
...
THE INFINITE
Zhang Zao
Top floor, language lab.
Autumn arrives with a
...
THE INNER SANCTUARY
Jan H. Mysjkin
The slightest difference to the naked eye initiates me into things that I otherwise would never
...
THE INNOCENT MAILBAG
António Osório
Were I an object, I’d love to see myself
as a mail train. Long and nocturnal,
...
THE INNUMERABLE TRAVELER
Eduardo Gómez
Look for me behind the trees sunken in the night
beyond the last houses of the poor quarters
...
THE INSTANT
Jorge Gaitán Durán
The day burnt like a rose.
and the bird of the moon fled
singing. We looked at each
...
THE INVERTED CITY
Gordana Benić
All four quarters of the world begin from an occult
groundplan.
The sketch of the
...
THE INVISIBLE CARMEL
Zelda
When I die
to become another essence,
the invisible Mount Carmel –
which is all
...
THE IVORY TOWER
Lauren Mendinueta
The world is an ivory tower, in vain
I search for a door within its curved walls.
I look
...
THE JOURNEY
Hagit Grossman
On this journey I believed with all my heart that I was Jesus
who had turned up here
...
THE JOURNEY
Santiago Barcaza
Call it a tree
And in doing so describe
Whatever
What you see
...
THE KEEPER OF SHEEP II
Fernando Pessoa
My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and
...
THE KEEPER OF SHEEP VI
Fernando Pessoa
To think about God is to disobey God,
Since God wanted us not to know him,
Which is why
...
THE KEEPER OF SHEEP XLVII
Fernando Pessoa
On an incredibly clear day,
The kind when you wish you'd done lots of work
So that
...
THE KEEPER OF SHEEP XXXIX
Fernando Pessoa
The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that
...
THE KILLING OF A TREE
Kunwar Narain
This time he was not there –
the old tree that always stood at attention,
like a guard
...
THE KING
Luís Miguel Nava
The sea’s in our body. While someone
whose heart is his king
arrays the other pieces on
...
THE KING OF ASINE
George Seferis
ILIAD*
All morning long we looked around the citadel*
starting from the
...
THE KING OF ITHACA
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Our civilization is so out of kilter that
Thought has separated itself from the
...
THE KING’S ENGLISH
Derry O’Sullivan
Our country from Dingle to the Graig
Stuck out its igneous tongue
At Slea Head erasing
...
THE KISS
Hadas Gilad
The kiss revealed the angel’s heart of flesh
the kiss revealed lungs in a
...
THE LAND OF NEVER
Nuno Júdice
If I went to the land of never,
I would have everything I wanted in a bed of nothing:
...
THE LAND OF THE HALF-HUMANS
Thangjam Ibopishak Singh
For six months just head without body, six months just body without head, has anyone
seen a land
...
THE LAND THAT WAS MINE
Jorge Gaitán Durán
Just to meet Sofia Kühn,
his thirteen year-old lover, Novalis believed in the other world;
...
THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER
José Tolentino Mendonça
Sometimes I miss having no one I can tell
a certain day from beginning to end
the real
...
THE LAST LEAF
Veerankutty
What is there
For the last leaf on the tree
To gloat over?
Well –
...
THE LAST ONES
Dan Pagis
I am already quite scarce. For years
I have appeared only here and there
at the edges
...
THE LAST ROMAN POET
Paulo Teixeira
As waves break over the beaches
and cannons boom beyond the city walls,
he asks for one
...
THE LAST STREET OF TEHRAN
Rosa Jamali
At the airport
The upshot of my hands now
Is this cramped land
It’s the size of the
...
THE LAST UNKNOWN PERSON
Ester Naomi Perquin
So you’ve lived in secret, were born
underground, have never been in the picture.
...
THE LAST WORD
Luuk Gruwez
She makes herself pretty for her death, my love.
No shirt, no skirt costs too much for her.
...
THE LATEST FINDINGS
Rutger Kopland
There were as we thought we knew two worlds -
the real one and the other one
...
THE LAUNDRY ABROAD
K. Schippers
Improvising with the laundry in hotels.
In cheap rooms you can hang a towel
out over a
...
THE LESSON — 1
Jiban Narah
In a wide room
I see a forest
Tearing the forests of images
I draw the line of
...
THE LETTERS
Rogi Wieg
What goes beyond understanding, goes over one’s hat,
a light, woolly cloud of
...
THE LIBRARY OF THE BLIND
Juan Manuel Roca
Entranced, at their tables of mahogany,
Some blind people go over the books like a piano,
...
THE LIGHTHOUSE
Mitsuharu Kaneko
You must not peer into the sky’s depths.
In the sky’s depths
gods are jostling one
...
THE LIGHTLY INJURED
Zhai Yongming
here come the lightly injured
gauze white as their white faces
their wounds sewn up more
...
THE LIONESS IN HER CAVE
Rajendra Kishore Panda
Like a god
in a doorless temple,
a cave in the column,
the lioness in her cave.
...
THE LITTLE BIT OF WATER
Yves Bonnefoy
This snowflake
That alights on my hand, I wish
To fix it as eternal
In making of
...
THE LITTLE BROOM
Sigitas Parulskis
By the centre for ritual services stands an automobile
doors open, a man, perhaps about
...
THE LITTLE GIRL FROM GAZA
Salman Masalha
The little girl from Gaza builds
a nest of sea feathers
the eyes of the man who stands
...
THE LITTLE LAMB
Yi Sha
as dusk approached I sat
on a chair
outside the house
watching a lamb chew
...
THE LITTLE STREET
Esther Kinsky
Later
there would be rain
rain!
cried the parrot in the morning
from
...
THE LIVES OF THE VIOLINISTS
Ivan Malkovych
The conservatory is a xylophone of bones,
a vibration of vertebrae in musical vortexes:
on
...
THE LOAD
Lêdo Ivo
A street led me to the port.
And I was the street with its torn windows
and the sun set
...
THE LOCK OF KNOWLEDGE
Mohamed Boudouik
Thanks to the snow that
Poured wisdom into vials
Thanks to the snow that
With
...
THE LOCK OF THE DICTATOR
Mohamed Boudouik
Chased
Since the trecherous stoning
Chased
by the sharp darkness of women
And the
...
THE LOVE OF CHEESE
Aryeh Sivan
In the summer of 1937, if I’m not mistaken,
my aunt, my father’s sister, who was in charge
...
THE LOVERS
Morten Søndergaard
I awake in a land where the lovers have seized power. They have introduced laws decreeing that no
...
THE LOVER’S THOUGHTS
Fernando Charry Lara
Since the intimacy the night the creature
The man who dreams about it and the sun bleeding in
...
THE MAD
K. Satchidanandan
The mad have no caste
or religion. They transcend
gender, live outside
ideologies.
...
THE MADHOUSE TREE
Nicolás Suescún
He knocked on all doors and none opened,
he looked at every window but all were closed.
...
THE MAGIC OF NIGHT
Eduardo Gómez
Of ancient cities sleeping forever
of the tired rivers on the stone
of the moon turning
...
THE MAGPIE
Roni Margulies
Just this side of the Erasmus Bridge,
in the middle of the bustling city,
among all the
...
THE MAN
Ivan Malkovych
He puts on a jester’s mask –
they recognize him.
He dresses in the robe of a
...
THE MAN WHO SAW LIVINGSTONE
Charl-Pierre Naudé
The man who had seen Livingstone was now virtually blind.
How long ago did the Englishman trudge
...
THE MAN WHO SAW LIVINGSTONE
Charl-Pierre Naudé
The man who had seen Livingstone was now virtually blind.
When was it the Englishman trudged
...
THE MANNERS OF FIRE
Julián Malatesta
The house of the poet Matsuo burnt down
In far away Edo, several centuries ago.
A plane tree
...
THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY
Luís Quintais
Boredom was the space where we waged
the battle of our lives. The teacher
talked and we
...
THE MARKED
Srečko Kosovel
They walk with death in their hearts.
Death wakes in their eyes.
A car spattering
...
THE MASK
Teixeira de Pascoaes
That living and unfettered light
Arriving from a distant, mysterious star
And reflecting off
...
THE MEAT THAT DOESN’T ROT
Sibila Petlevski
Like an abandoned pavilion in which a family of lions
lazes around, a pillar that doesn’t
...
THE MEN OF MY COUNTRY
Andriy Bondar
the men of my country
give up their seats on the subway
to the handicapped the aged
and to
...
THE MERCENARY
Charl-Pierre Naudé
The former SADF soldier is a mercenary these days
and thus well-equipped, in a manner of
...
THE METROPOL CAKE SHOP
Federico Díaz-Granados
I look at the reflection of my body
in the shop window.
In the glass
I see myself
...
THE MILL
Hédi Kaddour
I am the single point, the lesson
In a landscape where evening links
A stream, a
...
THE MINOTAUR
Goenawan Mohamad
Into the bed the Minotaur comes, sniffing
your body, your body hair,
that glows
...
THE MIRROR
Miltos Sachtouris
When my mirror turned
to the sky
there appeared
a moon half-devoured
by the
...
THE MIRROR
Yves Bonnefoy
Yesterday again
The clouds were passing
At the far dark end of the room.
But just
...
THE MISSING
Liu Waitong
It’s been thirty hours and you are looking for us.
Thirty days, thirty years,
One
...
THE MOLE
S. Joseph
I know a girl
Who has a big mole on her right cheek.
She lived some distance away
By
...
THE MOLE
Christine D’haen
Earth which I breathe in the heavy night,
earth for hunger, earth for thirst;
my soft
...
THE MOON
Miriam Van hee
a partying country that had no place for us
anymore, that’s how the moon
rose for
...
THE MOON AND NEW YORK
Mario Rivero
We met every day
in the same place
we shared poems, cigarettes
and sometimes an adventure
...
THE MOON WILL COVER ME
Barbara Korun
I have two animals,
A red one and a blue one.
When the blue one drinks,
the red one
...
THE MORNING
Gerrit Kouwenaar
The morning it will never be evening again
questing for standstill it was never light like
...
THE MORNING . . .
Manolis Anagnostakis
In the morning
At 5
The dry
Metallic echo
After the loaded trucks
That
...
THE MORNING WOMAN
Cecilie Løveid
There is no doubt that there is a body
inside the music
The music would have made love
...
THE MOTHER
Hugo Claus
I am not, I am only in your earth.
When you screamed and your skin quivered
My bones
...
THE MOTHERLAND
María Mercedes Carranza
This house of thick colonial walls
and a very nineteenth-century patio with azaleas
has
...
THE MOTHERS
Yonatan Berg
The melancholy mothers come to me in sleep,
demanding their sons.
I hold my head in my
...
THE MOUNTAINS
Titos Patríkios
First there was the sea.
I was born among islands.
I too an island have temporarily
...
THE MOUNTAINS OF SPAIN
Tahel Frosh
I am writing what is impossible
because there are people who talk about money during sex
...
THE MUDDIED SUN
Shoichiro Iwakiri
Frothing grape seeds corrode the moon.
A reddish blue twilight spreads through the breath
...
THE MURMUR OF MATERIAL
Predrag Lucić
In Gevgelia there is a man
Who once was and still is just a man
Even back then
...
THE MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD
J. Bernlef
It's always somewhere, but whoever happens upon it
in some nameless street, usually
...
THE MUSHROOMS OF DONBAS
Serhiy Zhadan
In spring Donbas disappears in the fog, and the sun hides behind heaps of earth.
So you need
...
THE MUSIC OF LOVE
Carlos Bedoya
The noise of death
here
in this desolate bar*
where serenity reigns
after a
...
THE MUSIC ROOM
Hédi Kaddour
As for the parquet, it’s in a fishbone pattern:
Each square made of four other
...
THE NAKED BODY OF ICE
Kim Hyesoon
Have you ever been to a place where white snow is kept
and to a storeroom full of hail?
...
THE NAMING OF A CROW
Yu Jian
from somewhere invisible
the crow kicks aside blocks of autumn cloud with its toes
and dives
...
THE NANTES TRAM
William Cliff
the people smoke the people drink something distilled
the people swallow coffee the people
...
THE NAVIGATORS
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Multiplicity makes us drunk
Astonishment leads us on
With daring and desire and calculated
...
THE NEW DOCTOR LIVINGSTONE
Giampiero Neri
Meanwhile, try doing something else.
Leave a blank margin in your diary.
Night walker in
...
THE NEW FISH
Erik Menkveld
Already when the specimen was being served
adjoining tables stopped the digging
of further
...
THE NEW MORNINGS
Dan Coman
several times a week there are new mornings
mornings that seem as good as any other
if
...
THE NEW REPUBLIC
Richard Minne
The new republic is strong.
Men write it on blank walls.
Schoolboys stare at it long
...
THE NOTARY
Gerrit Komrij
To start with, my life must be tidied up.
The contract stipulates explicitly.
I think
...
THE NUMBER DOGGIE
Jan Glas
From neither here nor there your trashy
postcards from Nostalgialand.
On
...
THE NURSERY OF DUST
Hassan El Ouazzani
There
In solitude. Near the river. Beside the tree.
In the dimness of the house. Down
...
THE OBJECT
George Mario Angel Quintero
The stuffed animal bled to death by osmosis. The pressure it had felt in its chest was so great.
...
THE OCEAN
Nikos Fokas
I avoid the coastline like a shark.
When a bulge
...
THE OLD CAPITAL NANKING
Mitsuharu Kaneko
An old capital (1) amid weeping willows.
There are tiles with yellow dragons painted on them.
...
THE OLD FISHERMAN’S NET
Anka Zagar
stars do not touch
like eyes which do not either
my path is full of sorrow
like an
...
THE OLD FURNISHINGS
Jin Haishu
all these things are familiar to you
you’ve described them in your notebooks
and mentioned
...
THE OLD MAN
Paul van Ostaijen
An old man in the street
his simple tale to the old woman
it's nothing it sounds like a
...
THE OLD MAN
José Luis Díaz Granados
But, old man, you have swallowed
so many Mondays and Tuesdays in your life
and drunk so
...
THE OLD WORD GRINDER
André Schmitz
and the mud he has on his eyelids
and the cloud that moves a little in his gaze
and the
...
THE ONE CENT PIECE
Jun Er
there’s a one cent piece in a compartment in my desk
all on its own
in among odd bits of
...
THE ONE FACE I REMEMBERED
Yi Sha
to describe him as repulsively ugly
would be quite appropriate
as well as convenient
but
...
THE ONE LOFTY AND ALONE
Heiichi Sugiyama
One topmost windowpane always attracted my eyes as I passed by the building. He was the first to
...
THE ONE WORD I MUST SAY
Chandrakanta Murasingh
I want to say one word only,
Even if it provokes ten counter points.
Hearing all those
...
THE ORNITHOLOGIST IN QUESTION
Morten Søndergaard
An ornithologist is a person with a powerful urge to watch birds. If two ornithologists catch
...
THE OTHER DAY
Varavara Rao
Not that my coming is without intimation
What needs be said always remains unsaid
Not
...
THE OTHER HAND
Mangalesh Dabral
After all I’ve only got one hand
and how much can you do with it?
The other hand’s almost
...
THE OUTING
Luis Vidales
The sky shimmers between the trees.
The trees imagine
they are on the shore of a violet
...
THE OVERSEERS
Mischa Andriessen
Like leopards men lie
on the cold, marble floor
they are bald and naked, honest
...
THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE
Lyor Shternberg
I place a few shrubs in the south, (close
to my chest). Further north on a random
white
...
THE PAIN OF THE WORLD
Gerhard Falkner
”Sigh!” - if only I could sigh
without having to mean the sigh
that curls up before
...
THE PAINTER
Roland Jooris
He writes in dots, in stains.
He scribbles what he sees.
He does not
ignore the
...
THE PALACE
Tomas Tranströmer
We stepped in. A single vast hall,
silent and empty, where the surface of the floor lay
...
THE PALACE OF FORTUNE
Antero de Quental
I dream I’m a knight who ventures forth
Through deserts, hot days, and pitch-black nights.
A
...
THE PALM SWAYS
Krešimir Bagić
The palm sways, so too the olive
Jacques Chirac and I have the same tie.
His round his
...
THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Alfred Schaffer
At that time Superman was known as extremely friendly.
He would greet politely at the breakfast
...
THE PARTRIDGE TAIL
Salman Masalha
1.
A deserted homeland on my lips.
Shaking off its shoulders
grains of wheat
...
THE PAST
Ana Luísa Amaral
Ah… old copybook
where I wrote out my French themes,
Mes Vacances: I adored
...
THE PATH ASKS
Salman Masalha
The old path asked them:
You who bear on your shoulders
sandals cut of palm leaves,
...
THE PEEPAL TREE
Yash Sharma
As I approach my village
the peepal tree
standing at the edge
of the slope
...
THE PERGUSA SPEEDWAY
Franco Buffoni
Martini keeps the rest of the field in check
And Moreno opens up a wider lead:
In the
...
THE PERPETUAL FEAST
José Luis Díaz Granados
My history is full of hisses and tangles,
of voices and events, of bloody questions
of
...
THE PHOTOCOPIER
Washington Cucurto
The convenience store is rough as the
elements.
So I turn on the photocopier. Its
...
THE PHOTOCOPIER
Washington Cucurto
Tomorrow when I die
I’ll stop being black
and after a little (apart from my
...
THE PIANO
Chandrakant Shah
One piano
Two light blue jeans
Three o’clock show
Four main characters
Five dollars per
...
THE PIANO
Tian Yuan
For me
the piano is like the skeleton of a monster
occupying nobly a corner of the city
...
THE PIG
Charles Ducal
The pig lives on the other side
of love, low
to the ground of our loneliness.
...
THE PILLOW
Mourid Barghouti
The pillow said:
at the end of the long day
only I know
the confident man’s
...
THE PLAIN OF TULUÁ
Fernando Charry Lara
At the side of the road, the two bodies
Side by side:
From a distance they seem to be making
...
THE PLATE
Michio Mado
When it slipped from my hand
before it hit the floor
the plate broke
inside me
...
THE PLOUGH
Yves Bonnefoy
Five o’clock. Snow again. I hear voices
In the front of the world.
A
...
THE POEM
Willem van Toorn
So you may never pass from sight
inside the poem I hold you tight –
the way you walk,
...
THE POEM OF THE ALCOHOLICS
Ion Mureşan
Alas, the poor, poor alcoholics,
to whom no one has a good word to say!
But especially,
...
THE POET
Miltos Sachtouris
When they find me on the cross of my death
the sky around will have reddened far beyond
...
THE POET TO HIMSELF
Leonard Nolens
Go on, just you try, unclothe me
To the bone, I’ll remain the final cut
Of your suit, the
...
THE POETS
Benno Barnard
We,
sightless voyeurs under the petticoats
of the heavens,
deaf philosophers
...
THE POET'S FRIEND
Jotamario Arbeláez
The poet's friend
has a wife whom the poet covets
she’s all eyes
and lives in
...
THE POET'S VADEMECUM
Richard Minne
Act more stupid than you are,
but watch for snares that trip you;
both time and space
...
THE POOR
Rituraj
The eyes of the poor are binoculars
that see from a distance
whether the berries and
...
THE PORT OF MACHALA
Julián Malatesta
The old sailor told of
A cave by the sea
From which every night,
With fine sheets of
...
THE POSITION
Heiichi Sugiyama
The wind in the outfield is cold on my cheeks and
I am a centerfielder, all alone
...
THE PRINCIPAL FUND OF WORDS
Linda Maria Baros
If you do not write my name every single day,
well then, may your hand be crushed by the vice
...
THE PRODIGAL SON
Miriam Van hee
first we heard voices, then we
saw it, two men trying to catch a sheep
on the other
...
THE PRODIGAL SON
André Schmitz
The prodigal son hasn’t returned.
These are the pigs with which
he shared acorns
...
THE PROPER DANISH SUMMER
Henrik Nordbrandt
A proper Danish summer shall be the theme of this sonnet:
For it is only proper that what
...
THE PROPHET AT HOME
Jotamario Arbeláez
I live in a workers neighborhood, in an old house, in slippers,
and on the same table where
...
THE PROSTITUTES
A. M. Pires Cabral
Back then our town
would be visited by prostitutes –
our only recourse,
the
...
THE PROTECTING WORD
Aifric Mac Aodha
Horses’ skulls would be laid
Under dance hall corners, once,
to echo the
...
THE PULLOVER SHIRT
Kazue Shinkawa
No matter what I say,
this child takes off something
along with his shirt.
Again
...
THE PUREST PRESENCE
José Tolentino Mendonça
Nothing in the world is closer
but those to whom we deny our words
love, certain
...
THE QUTAB’S PRECINCT
Kunwar Narain
All the things in my mind
were otherwise absolutely clear and chronological
...
THE RAIN
Yukio Tsuji
Now and again a fairy arrives
and hangs from my earlobe—
a bit like a horsefly
...
THE RAIN
William Cliff
the rain fell very straight all through the idle night to repeat
the right-angled rain fell
...
THE RAINS
Dilip Chitre
Through her blood’s lightly layered
Hazy darkness
Lightning flashes out branches of my
...
THE RAPE
Dan Coman
not for a moment did i stop talking to myself as if to a woman
but today my shamelessness
...
THE RAPTURE OF MY DREAMS
José Luis Díaz Granados
Where am I? I awaken
and can’t find my things.
Have I lost the keys
that let me
...
THE REASON TO LIVE
Saroop Dhruv
No
I do not want to recite the ‘Kalama’
and convert myself from Saroop to Salma.
...
THE RED AWNING
Roni Margulies
Was there something, some day,
somewhere, some time, I could have said
which could have
...
THE RED WIND WHISTLING
Carlos López Degregori
She lives inside a stone in a stone country.
She opens and shuts her stone window each
...
THE RETIRED BEAR
Inuo Taguchi
The storm gone,
the purple sky showed through.
The bushes began pulsating
...
THE RETURN OF THE BODY
Dirk van Bastelaere
Where I am a flower meadow
is missing, even though I’m standing in
a parched flower
...
THE REVERSE (FRAGMENT 2)
Anne Penders
The reverse, cruel.
Blinds the dazel of the day.
At the foot of the birch, the
...
THE REVERSE OF THE FALL
Tallulah Flores
Never let the simulacrum be superfluous
that overcomes fear in the morning.
Let a
...
THE RING DER KRIBELUNGEN
Jules Deelder
Goering had a taste for rings
He wore two around each finger
He wore rings around his
...
THE RIVER
Hester Knibbe
I fill what is low-lying with my passing
and drag along with me through town and
...
THE RIVER
Shuntaro Tanikawa
Earth-colored water hesitates, flows
I realize it is a river
The descendant of formless
...
THE RIVER BANK
Hu Xudong
I am holding a river and sleep through the night.
I forget how it is that we met:
in
...
THE RIVER’S SECRET
Henrik Nordbrandt
This landscape looks like a secret
because the river can’t be seen
from the spot
...
THE ROAD TO OHRID*
Vasco Graça Moura
from the heights of the walls of ohrid
to where he’d run upon hearing the screams
of the
...
THE ROMAN ALPHABET
Andriy Bondar
I’ve long had
the urge
to write at least one poem
using the roman alphabet
one of
...
THE ROOM
Hiroshi Kawasaki
The room was filled with
Darkness like silk
From inside
A graceful hand
...
THE ROSE AND HER MAN
Anne Vegter
A man looked for his rose, sticking from his pocket.
Strange minutes both before and
...
THE ROSES OF TIME
Bei Dao
When the gate guard sinks into sleep
You turn back together with the storm
That which
...
THE RUBBISH OF THE WORLD
José Tolentino Mendonça
I have friends who pray to Simone Weil
For many years now I’ve noticed Flannery O’Connor
...
THE SADNESS CAGE
Esther Ettinger
It’s the sadness cage
not even ten by ten. A lioness
walks back and forth on a bare
...
THE SAILOR'S SUICIDE
Paul van Ostaijen
The sailor
hears the voice of the Lorelei
he looks at his watch
and jumps in the
...
THE SAINT
Miltos Sachtouris
He stared deep
deep
into the well
its depth
had no end
in this life
...
THE SAME LAZY DAY, LATER
Charles Mungoshi
And with the night
come my unfailing companions
the wind and the rain:
walking
...
THE SAND MAIDEN
Orietta Lozano
She talks about fire
as if it were water,
She hides her face
in the ashes of
...
THE SATRAPY
Constantine Cavafy
Too bad that, cut out as you are
for grand and noble acts,
this unfair fate of yours
...
THE SCYTHE
Maria Barnas
The flatlands inhale. Roots scrat for a grasp
on thin air, a gasp against the window.
A
...
THE SEAGULLS OF ISTANBUL
Roni Margulies
They feel let down by the sea:
Some haven’t flown over blue waters
or tasted fish
...
THE SEAL CATCHER
Maung Chaw Nwe
I am a no-body
I am a no-good layabout
I have had plenty of
...
THE SEARCH: 1997
Jerry Zondo
“I am searching for the Spirit of the greatest heart under the African sky.”
I traverse the
...
THE SECOND DEATH
Nikos Karouzos
Home erectus, remote starting point of the Iliad,
wouldn’t it have been
...
THE SECOND SEX
Miri Ben Simhon
I give orders to an imaginary director
who will utter marvelous subtleties spiraling
...
THE SENSES
Stefano Dal Bianco
The peach-tree that I see blossoming among the ruins of the city of Milan is not life
...
THE SEVEN DAY JOURNEY
Mangalesh Dabral
First, Monday flaps open like a freshly washed sheet
Hope snuggles up and says, This time
...
THE SHADOWS
Luis Vidales
When the moon rises
shadows begin to jump up and down.
Plaf! Plaf! You hear their sound as
...
THE SHAPE OF THE OCEAN
Jiang Hao
Every time you ask about the shape of an ocean
I should bring you two bags of ocean water.
...
THE SHELF-STOCKER
Washington Cucurto
Ah - what the fucking fuck!? You people
look at who the hell just rolled up, Sir
...
THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK
Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali
The rays of the sun
are like a pair of scissors
cutting the blanket
of the dawn
...
THE SHORE OF THE SKY
Tatsuji Miyoshi
Where are you from, traveler from afar,
resting in treetops bared by the winter?
The
...
THE SHUFFLER
Jun Er
on my left foot: a shoe
my right foot: bare
yes, you’ll often find me this way
not because
...
THE SIGNS IGNORE US
Juan Manuel Roca
Windows
Remain
Looking out at landscape.
Parks
Live on
Lying on the
...
THE SILVER CLASP
Henrik Nordbrandt
The June breeze presses a thin dress
up against the body of the girl who’s wearing
...
THE SIMPLE
P.P. Ramachandran
Nothing more than a sweet cry
To say, I am here.
A dropped feather is all that
...
THE SKY
Kazue Shinkawa
Beyond the sky there is another sky
and beyond that sky there is another
however far you
...
THE SLEEP OF THE BRAVE
Odysseus Elytis
They will smell of incense, and their faces are burnt by their crossing through the Great Dark
...
THE SLIPPER
Roni Margulies
One day a few months ago
an old woman appeared
at the entrance of the underground
...
THE SNACK
Andrea Cote
Remember also María
those afternoons at four o’clock
in our burnt port
Our port
was
...
THE SNIFFY BUNCH
Maarten Inghels
Stay in, someone says, the revolution is happening on the web.
Someone from our clan lays
...
THE SONG OF LONELINESS
Mitsuharu Kaneko
Finally these guardian deities of the lonely spirit brought the war.
You are not to blame. I,
...
THE SOOTHING WORD
Aifric Mac Aodha
The opening image commands belief:
thousands and thousands of mice
streaming in and
...
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
Lêdo Ivo
Sunday afternoon, I return to the old Maceió cemetery
where my dead never stop dying
...
THE SOUND OF THE WIND
Porfirio Barba Jacob
The sound of the wind in the arcade
holds within it the key to myself:
I am a
...
THE SPACE YOU OCCUPY
Maria Barnas
The rocks will have to turn carefully into deer
on the ridge of the hill. Ragged and blacker
...
THE SPECIFIC KEY TO HEAVEN
Luis Eduardo Rendón
There is no pocket where you can keep the key of heaven
nor a place in the house
or in
...
THE SPINNERS
Hédi Kaddour
The one who has kept, in spite of winter
A memory of grapes on her cheeks
Follows a
...
THE SPIRIT OF PROTEST
G.O.D. Obori
This is a voice asking for support from the spiritual world. It is the voice of a community which
...
THE SPLENDOR
Meira Delmar
I never knew its name
It could
have been love, a bit
of happiness, or simp-
...
THE SPLIT
Gerhard Falkner
whom do you think i saw yesterday? me!
yes but i was not alone
who do you think was with
...
THE SQUIRT UNDER THE BED
Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin
Who’s the squirt under your bed
that unfurled his fist yesterday
to pluck at my
...
THE STARS FORETELL
Lucas Malan
When the Zodiac revolves towards
the sign of the Bull, the nights grow still
and the
...
THE STATION
Miltos Sachtouris
In memory of Guillaume Apollinaire
It rains continually in my sleep
my dream fills with
...
THE STATION TO SPRING
Yosuke Tanaka
I screw up my face against the oncoming wind
Which carries my feet to the left and the
...
THE STEAMLINER
Jacques Roubaud
The steamliner climbed to the fifth floor and cried:
...
THE STONE HOUSE
Andrea Cote
It was common
and dull
and peeved
that gesture
with which we turned our backs to the
...
THE STONE OF WATER
Fredy Chicangana
On the banks of a restless river
we go asking the stones
about our passage through the
...
THE STORM AND TEMPEST
Eva Gerlach
Woke up at a gale digging
into the roof. Charging, bashing its unseeing
face, clawing
...
THE STORY
Ouyang Yu
They are separating
Splitting everything down the middle:
Their money
Their furniture
...
THE STORY OF MY PEOPLE
Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy
The story of my people
has the clean steps of my grandfather
he goes on to his own
...
THE STORY OF OEDIPUS
Titos Patríkios
He wanted to solve riddles
and illuminate the darkness
where everyone gets
...
THE STRANGER
Ayman Agbaria
A stranger is born in my home.
He wears my clothes.
He arrives earlier than I do for
...
THE STREWN BODY
Luís Miguel Nava
His body was getting lost in the desert, which kept gaining more ground and redefining its borders
...
THE STUDENTS
Piedad Bonnet
The healthy, spirited students of splendid smiles
and velvety cheeks, the ones that light a
...
THE STUMBLING OF THE WIND
Ahmed Mejjati
Snow and silence rest on the coast
The waves are motionless on the sand
And the wind –
...
THE SUMMER DUST
Irena Matijašević
big flowers
in concrete pots. a child running.
a number, a halt, vivisection
...
THE SUN
Aldo Nove
For there were roads to walk upon
and a sky to watch, that loomed
that poured,
...
THE SUN LAUGHS
Srečko Kosovel
The sun laughs at the dead
You
with burning cheeks
and with hearts burning,
...
THE SUPPER
Armando Romero
The monks run at the sound of the dinner bell
their habits raised as are their appetites.
We
...
THE SUPPORT FOR MUSIC
Vasco Graça Moura
the support for music can be the relationship
between a man and a woman, the staff
of their
...
THE SURVEYOR
Rutger Kopland
It isn’t mere indifference, in a certain sense
it is perhaps even love that drives him on,
...
THE SYLLABLE
Eugénio de Andrade
All morning I was searching for a syllable.
It’s very little, that’s for sure: a vowel,
a
...
THE TABLE
Lennart Sjögren
With your angled surface you stand there
and consider us
you watch us
when we
...
THE TATTOO ARTIST
Silke Scheuermann
Everything etched into the skin
Edged in in black
Even the sun abruptly risen
on the
...
THE TAVERN
Hassan Najmi
In the neighbourhood bar
I saw my shadow drinking
A glass of wine.
And I am
...
THE TEN POEMS OF SOLITUDE V
Hugues C. Pernath
I abhor the shame, the shudder of the past
When everything was more than being and nothing
...
THE TERMINAL MY BED
Gili Haimovich
I fall asleep like a landing plane.
Only ending causes planes to land.
And the world
...
THE THEORY OF DOORS
Luis Vidales
I am someone who is fond of scientific investigations. Recently I’ve discovered a theory of
...
THE THERAPEUTIC MIRROR
Mark van Tongele
Accept for once that wonderworking exists
and assume that during dream sleep, tonight
...
THE THIN LINE
Ryuichi Tamura
You are always by yourself
In your eyes where I have never seen tears
there’s something
...
THE THIN LINE AGAIN
Ryuichi Tamura
In my dreams
the sun
is always above my head
and it keeps growing a pitch-black
...
THE THIRD DAY
Jan Lauwereyns
The man was old he had no courage had no strength had just
a dog that guided him to scents
...
THE THIRD EYE
Mazisi Kunene
You will know it is the age of the third eye
That travels the expanse of purple panoramas
...
THE THREE CYPRESS TREES
Mourid Barghouti
Transparent and frail,
like the slumber of woodcutters,
serene, foreshadowing things to
...
THE TIGRESS
Prathibha Nandakumar
He is the animal trainer
makes even the fiercest of fierce animals
crawl, jump, stand on hind
...
THE TIME MACHINE
Nicolás Suescún
The clock has lost its hands
and man marks time with his,
always turning around on his own
...
THE TIME OF BIRDS
Luz Mary Giraldo
Ungraspable and sewing
the word
covers with a deceiving cloth
the wound of night:
...
THE TORN FLAG
Ahmed Barakat
Long live the general
Down with the general
The voices
were the same voices that were
...
THE TORTOISE
Srijato
Wrinkled skin. Age? Must be three or four hundred
Like dark circles beneath the eyes, the
...
THE TOWER OF LEANDER
Roni Margulies
Diving into the black waters at Salacak every evening,
he’d swim, sometimes easily,
...
THE TOWER OF VEGA
Chimako Tada
Carved around the tower of Vega
Which soars high into the night
Are tens of thousands of
...
THE TRACTOR SPEAKS
António Osório
I don’t like this grasshopper body.
I’m constant, I tremble, others use me,
a slave of
...
THE TRAIN YARD
Hassan Najmi
A woman tourist in the station. A kiosk for newspapers, and tobacco.
A depressing newspaper. A
...
THE TRAMONTANA
Erik Lindner
Off the coast the diver rests in his story
and sparsely draws the cliff behind the beach.
The
...
THE TRANSPARENT GLASS
Kazue Shinkawa
Though the water rises above its rim
swallows one dime . . .
two dimes . . . and three
...
THE TRAVELER
Eduardo Gómez
After numerous trips he returned to the house naked
his hands picked up a broken moon in the
...
THE TREES OF COCHIN
K. G. Sankara Pillai
Once upon a time
the passage from Thrikkakkara to Cochin harbour
exuded the faith and
...
THE TRIUMPH OF INSECTS
A. M. Pires Cabral
Not all insects will make it to November.
In December hardly any wings will be seen
...
THE TROUBLEMAKER
Yanko González
is feared. crazy for handbags. of lupita ferrer ubiquity. prepares consommé. snacks to go.
...
THE TRUE JOURNEY
Jan H. Mysjkin
After death the soul is reincarnated in the body of an animal.
I saw an elephant with
...
THE TRUNK OF LIGHT
Inuo Taguchi
The tree, its trunk filled with light, is
a pillar that stands like a god
...
THE TWO CATS
Luis Vidales
The cat and its shadow. They are two cats – but it is really only one. For me, this explains
...
THE TWO OF US
Armando Romero
You can't toss for heads or tails at the same time and then measure your luck against abysses.
...
THE UMBILICAL CORD
Chirikure Chirikure
I am not stone, chicken or even wind, no!
There was something that bound me to my mother, in
...
THE UNCONSCIOUS
Antero de Quental
The familiar ghost who accompanies me
(Without, however, showing his face)
And whom I
...
THE UNICORN’S FATE
Jules Deelder
The unicorn’s fate
Isn’t hard to explain
When Noah cast off
...
THE UNTHINKABLE
Albert Bontridder
It wants the grandest place
– the heavenly –
albeit not on the
...
THE VALLEY IS A DREAM
Aharon Almog
My mother may she rest in peace would say that all
diseases come from the weather
colds
...
THE VENOMOUS
Pandora
I get delicate
Each time I shed my skin
Don’t you dare think
I am soft
...
THE VERGE OF ANNIHILATION
Mohamed Bachkar
On the verge
is my neck;
Give me birth on the nest of these legendary ashes
For my head to
...
THE VERY OLD ONE SINGS:
Lucebert
there is not more in little
nor is there less
still is uncertain what was
what is
...
THE VILLAGE IDIOT
Fatima Naoot
I feel like weeping,
I really do,
A girl lost in the streets
Unable to calculate or
...
THE VILLAGE STATION
H.H. ter Balkt
Aye,
small scabious and touch-me-not lavishly blossomed
but the blue express train had
...
THE VIRGIN OF MERCY
Yves Bonnefoy
All, now,
Nice and warm
Under your light cloak,
Almost nothing but mist and
...
THE VOICE OF THINGS
Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão
Only the wind’s gusts
give lyrical sound
to the windmill’s sails.
Only things
...
THE VOYAGER
Raúl Henao
What dangers lie in wait for the voyager who crosses
the garden of shoulders to cry on as
...
THE WAIT
Julián Malatesta
But if you come,
There will be no defeat in this land,
Each night I welcome you with my
...
THE WAKE OF THE SCRIBE
María Clemencia Sánchez
I wrote the long trail of your trees
in the image and likeness of your dictation.
The
...
THE WALKER
Eddy Van Vliet
The walker breathes heavily. Leaving
nothing he has felt how everything remains.
...
THE WAR
Hassan Najmi
I seek a safe place
For my mother’s scent
And I hide the rose in my blood.
...
THE WAR
Karinna Alves Gulias
Who remembers love afterwards . . .
in the swelling of the setting sun?
...
THE WAR WORKS HARD
Dunya Mikhail
How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning,
it
...
THE WATER HORSE
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
At first it was only in her dreams
That he came and lay with her.
On the day
...
THE WATER HOUSE
Steinar Opstad
You talk about the water house
in the forest
and you say we must go there
and one
...
THE WAY
Vito Apüshana (Miguel Ángel López)
In the cave of Pulaashiru’u
there is a nest of old wisdom that I must feed.
They
...
THE WAY POEMS WORK
Silke Scheuermann
when they glitter
with ineffable casualness
or open out
shining hypnotically
or
...
THE WAY TO BURY A HAND
Sasja Janssen
The milk cooks to morning-yellow over the enamel saucepan
its bottom like young black earth,
...
THE WEAVER
Juan Diego Tamayo
As I weave, I sing. My life has been one of weaving every hour and every instant. I have woven
...
THE WELL
Udayan Vajpeyi
Mother’s money lies hidden under a sheet of paper in a green box.
Father stands before a dark
...
THE WEST WIND BLOWS
Lars Gustafsson
The west wind blows.
The west wind
through the open window,
turning the pages of
...
THE WHISTLING WIND
Wang Xiaoni
The wind whistles overhead,
now loud, now low,
sounding rather melancholy,
rather
...
THE WHITE BLOUSE
Fatiha Morchid
I conceal my pain
And grin
I hasten to the notebooks of days
Use rouge on my lips
...
THE WHITE CAT TOQTAMISH
Hu Xudong
In 568 AD, a Sogdian
came to Istami’s Western Turkic Khaganate
from Khosrau the
...
THE WHITE ROAD
José Tolentino Mendonça
I walked with you through the exact afternoon
you gave me your hand, life seemed
hard
...
THE WILD ONCE
L.F. Rosen
Oh, who hasn’t known inside,
when young, his heartbeat as a guide,
a lightning flash
...
THE WIND
Luis Vidales
This wind that’s coming is a stranger.
It is not one of those with a proper name.
It is not
...
THE WIND TURNS THE PAGES
Lars Gustafsson
Late summer, the time of year
that suits my age.
And the slow,
one might almost
...
THE WIND WHISTLES
Jūkichi Yagi
The wind whistles through corn.
It whistles, “Die!”
It whistles, “Die!”
I think I
...
THE WINDOW
Hassan Najmi
Nothing remains:
Only the wound of memory.
And the meeting place,
The smell of
...
THE WINTER CLUSTER
Norbert Hummelt
the bees are huddled in their winter cluster, we can’t see
them now at this time of
...
THE WINTER-BUILT HOUSE
Sheng Xing
the winter-built house
the workmen wearing padding jackets
the frost-covered rocks
the
...
THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW
J. Slauerhoff
The gate never opens. The window’s so high
That at first panoramas to her appear:
Rivers,
...
THE WOMEN ARRIVE
Jairo Guzmán
The women arrive
to serve cups of tears
so that my beast of light
drinks
...
THE WORD
Paolo Ruffilli
The word, for me,
came from far away.
I felt it to be almost
an a priori. A
...
THE WORDS I COULDN’T SAY
Horacio Benavides
You wanted
some words for yourself
I contemplated you
and making an effort
...
THE WORLD AS REPRESENTATION
Luís Quintais
“The world is my representation.”
What type of image
flashes in my mind
when, at night, a
...
THE WORLD WITH NO WORDS
Ryuichi Tamura
1.
The world with no words is a sphere in bright daylight
I am an upright man
...
THE WORST NIGHTMARE
Celia de Fréine
There were days when you’d shove
your hand into a cupboard in search of a cabbage
and come
...
THE YEARS PASS THUS
Lauren Mendinueta
The years pass
and though life accuses me of immobility
I have also traveled.
Like a
...
THE YOUTH
Piotr Sommer
On the way there wasn’t a single star
and I, hearing nothing,
was taking it right there
...
THE YOUTH
Tatsuji Miyoshi
the day is ending
out of a monastery gate
an alluring youth is coming home
he
...
THEATER
Remco Campert
I take you
backstage
where the actors pinch ass
play cards
read stockmarket
...
THEATRE
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
1
All these wars
make the world unhomely
make homes rust apart
make you
...
THEATRE AT CON MARKET
Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng
Movie-house or makeshift booth, you are the temple we urchins worship:
going to the afternoon
...
THEBES
Hester Knibbe
*
The lamb turns on the spit, feet
bound, head still
...
THEIR NAKEDNESS
L.F. Rosen
At the foot of the hill
the souls are given
an ivory casket
that they must bind on
...
THEME
Elke Erb
potter around: then you become things. Their prey.
Take care or your eye
as you potter
...
THEME AND VARIATIONS
Eduardo Gómez
No one has loved or hated
in vain.
Those who were far away
were loved,
and
...
THEN I BROUGHT YOU
Esther Ettinger
Then I brought you a persimmon
and we ate it at the café near the sea.
It was probably
...
THEN THE SEA
Mark Boog
Then the sea presents itself in which we can be salt;
a slow vaporisation dawns,
...
THEONEWHOSPRANGUP
Efrat Mishori
Where did she spring from
the woman who came to tell me how beautiful life is
Where did
...
THERE ARE DAYS
Oreet Meital
There are days when it’s even hard to go out. You go for a ride and see:
a girl taking
...
THERE IS A DARKNESS
Han Dong
I notice forest darkness
Darkness with a difference
Darkness like a square, in the
...
THERE IS A ROOM WITH NO LIGHT
Carmen García
There is a room with no light. Its colors are dark. In it move the secrets that someone whispers in
...
THERE IS NO DEATH IN A DEATH
Abol Froushan
There is no death in a death that shadows me
or ships into my body like a woman who denies me
...
THERE IS NO POEM
Fernando Rendón
There is no poem
There is no music that summons you
That reaches you
There is no melody
...
THERE IS STILL A LOT LEFT
Ester Naomi Perquin
You can leave birds that have been hit by a car, you can
push them aside flapping and all,
...
THERE IS THE ROAD
Claude Esteban
There is the road with its pot-holes,
everywhere there is this immense menace
that
...
THESEUS
Halyna Petrosanyak
White sails lie in a case. The stars of Ariadne’s crown born
yesterday illuminate the
...
THEY
Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng
soon will arrive, knock, on the bluestone slab
utter dropping - signs of excitement
...
THEY AND MY ANONYMOUS BEING
Raúl Gómez Jattin
Is Raúl Gómez Jattin all of his friends
And is Rául Gómez nobody when he passes by
When he
...
THEY ANNOUNCE
Michelle Grangaud
They announce the
flight coming in
from Barcelona at gate thirty-two.
She’s
...
THEY CAME
Odysseus Elytis
THEY CAME
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my
...
THEY SAY
Gloria Posada
They say
that when the Earth spins,
at different moments, cities
lie under the same
...
THIEF
Bongekile Joyce Mbanjwa
The weather changed
Turned pitch black
It became cloudy and the stomach rumbled
I
...
THIEVES IN MIND
Kiki Dimoula
Crying she describes
how burglars wrecked the house
the wretches took her jewellery and
...
THINGS
Monika Rinck
things today are somehow lonely
things are like vases without friends
like the sideboard
...
THINGS
Lennart Sjögren
It was best on the border near daybreak
the one that grows visible after the wolf-hour
...
THINGS THAT HAPPEN
Mario Rivero
There were this man and this woman who met one day
No doubt the man smiled to the woman
no
...
THINGUMMYJIGS
Jin Haishu
some thingummyjigs are miraculously preserved
as if unwilling to be forgotten
then one day,
...
THIRD SONG
Gerrit Kouwenaar
The day before peace our almighty
father major sent me and six others into the dead
...
THIRST
Zhai Yongming
tonight all the light is shining for you
tonight you are a small colony
that remains for a
...
THIRST
Vasant Abaji Dahake
Thirst
thighs loins breast throat
thirst
from out the eyes
thirst
arms
...
THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE
Gerrit Komrij
He’s beady-eyed. His jet-black cloak is heaving
Like some great bellows regularly fed.
...
THIRST FOR SPACE
María Clemencia Sánchez
I will give my life for the tower
where the princess sleeps.
I don’t ask for
...
THIRTY-YEAR-OLD WOMAN
Adília Lopes
You’ll love
my shiny
nose
my stretch marks
my blackheads
my writings
my
...
THIS CARNIVAL
Jairo Guzmán
This carnival
won the battle
spread golden ears
of intangible wheat
...
THIS DARKNESS
Mehrdad Fallah
Getting out of this exhibition
is not as easy as you think
Even if you dare
and
...
THIS IS HOW IT WILL BE
L.F. Rosen
You call them inside for the night. Inside is:
up in the loft, in their cots under crisp fresh
...
THIS IS MY DAY
Menno Wigman
This morning I woke up inside a dream
of someone living in a skin of flesh.
And I
...
THIS IS MY NEW YEAR:
Valeria Tentoni
I don’t need you, December.
I did everything right,
I did everything wrong.
...
THIS IS THE STORY
Flavio Santi
If I said I want to die
This becomes a snapshot of myself
as aphrodisiacal hero Simon
...
THIS IS THE WORLD
J. Bernlef
Thrown on the paper
in a relentless stream:
The grasshopper with vertigo
...
THIS MOMENT
Yan Jun
At this moment China has no borders, no morning melodies, TV-station paralysis, one billion people
...
THIS NUMBER DOES NOT EXIST
Mangalesh Dabral
This number does not exist.
Wherever I go whichever number I dial
At the other end a
...
THIS SNOW
Mehrdad Fallah
This snow is crying out for a crow
the blacker the better you write
pick up a fistful
...
THIS STORY
Navit Barel
You’re directing your gaze at something. It’s not clear. At my bare
head
...
THIS WAY OUT
Rui Pires Cabral
But is there a way out? Imagine
in insomnia the forests that grow
at such hours in
...
THIS WINTER
Mangalesh Dabral
Last winter was difficult
Remembering it I shiver this winter
Though the days are not so
...
THIS WORK OF ART
Fang Xianhai
Getting out
of the taxi
I noticed in the distance
on the corner of Nanshan Road
...
THIS WORLD
Toshio Nakae
Water and water
do not mistake each other.
Water and water
know each other very
...
THOSE LETTERS
Nirupama Dutt
Where must those letters be?
Letters written on stormy nights
I sent to many a
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (12)
Bojan Radašinović
12.
we will always be strangers here
they hate them
look at them
crowding the
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (13)
Bojan Radašinović
13.
some kid was running
bare-butt in the fountain
dressed only in a plush
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (2)
Bojan Radašinović
2.
after Sandra had gone
in casual conversations
even with strangers
I was forced
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (6)
Bojan Radašinović
6.
I remember
how nice it was in Pula
in Valsaline Bay
in our room with six
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (7)
Bojan Radašinović
7.
our journey was stopped
after thirty minutes
Slovenian border
our policemen were
...
THOSE WERE THE DAYS (9)
Bojan Radašinović
9.
you are so soft
your arms are stretched
because of the plastic bags
from the
...
THOSE WERE THE RULES
Eli Eliahu
Those were the rules. We had to leave the children
with others. Complete strangers.
For
...
THREE DAMSELS RETURNED
Gerrit Kouwenaar
One got up late, summer hangs heavily
down from the sky, even the smells are purpler
...
THREE OR FOUR CHILDREN
Ruy Belo
More or less here not long ago there were some children
three or four children more or less
...
THREE SLOPES 3
Bart Van der Straeten
chest puffed up
chin pushed forward
go to stand
at the tip of the
...
THREE WARS 1
Bart Van der Straeten
how
now here
to extend
this existence
escape route
...
THROUGH THE NOSE
Paolo Ruffilli
I have seen you in a dream
running towards me
surprised and pleased
to have found me
...
THRUSH
George Seferis
“THRUSH”*
Ephemeral issue of a vicious daemon and a harsh fate,
why do you force
...
TICKET
Geet Chaturvedi
I’m not mine, but someone else's politics.
I’m someone else's hidden
...
TIGER SKINS (LAT NJY)
Aku Wuwu
Grandfather hunted tigers.
Father sold tiger skins.
Before being sold,
...
TIGERS VISIT HER ROOM
Carmen García
Tigers visit her room. They pace relentlessly. Their shadows reflect nowhere. Their stripes are
...
TIME
Rutger Kopland
Time – it is strange – it is strangely beautiful too
never to know what it
...
TIME AND PLACE
Alfred Schaffer
‘So it’s true then?’ A small car jolts along a country road,
a quivering focal point, seen out
...
TIME DOES NOT PASS
Rajendra Bhandari
Baje has become incapable of going down to the fields
Last year, using a stick, he could reach
...
TIME IN COLOR
Emmanuel Moses
Quick! Colors through the window
Colors on fields and forests
Before the weather
...
TIME IS SHORT II
Hubert van Herreweghen
Fraudster light, in the emperor’s new clothes
this morning,
shivers in dew a while,
...
TIME OF DAY
Umberto Fiori
When it’s the time for coming out of work
you can’t walk anywhere.
Against the background
...
TIMES
Giovanny Gómez
I speak about the days and the nights
I speak about the tremulation of the streets
I
...
TIMES ARE HARD MAN
Benjamin Shvili
times are hard man the hardest
so perhaps you’ll come
just for me
without a
...
TIMID FIRE
H.H. ter Balkt
Time was lacking,
yes, no doubt about it.
A black thrush was singing
shamelessly,
...
TIMOTEI SHAMPOO
Gert Vlok Nel
what happened my pretty that
december when we lived like jet
setters in gordons bay in
...
TITIAN'S NEW PAD
Durs Grünbein
Heaving with throw cushions. All the ornamental fish are yapping
Behind thickened glass, in
...
TO A DEAD RAT FOUND IN A PARK
Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos
Here this creature ended its vast career
as a dark and living rat beneath the starry expanse
...
TO A GOLEM
Tomaž Šalamun
Lost in thought,
you came to watch me.
I’m like an olive branch – your
...
TO A ROOSTER
A. M. Pires Cabral
That creature that affronted the dawn
with its acidic, assiduous voice.
That had spurs
...
TO ACEDIA
Erik Lindner
1. She is where she saw him.
(A sideways glance
at the oncoming traffic.)
...
TO ALBERTO TELES
Antero de Quental
Alone! – On the hill the solitary hermit
Glimpses God, who grants him solace.
At sea
...
TO ARI
Jules Deelder
Darling Ari
Don’t get scared
The world is round
Tho looking flat
...
TO BE A DROP
Dane Zajc
To be a drop on your breasts,
to be a clear bright drop
on thirsty skin,
to be a
...
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Abol Froushan
To be or not in love
with your picture or your womanhood?
This delicate peony
or
...
TO BITE IN FRENCH
Delphine Lecompte
I once went to language camp
I heard the verb bite in French
And I thought it meant to
...
TO BOARD ANOTHER BOAT
Luis Eduardo Rendón
I
Love: in amphibious prisons
I battled against succubi that supplanted your face
...
TO CHLORIS
Justyna Bargielska
If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me
then forgive me but I have no idea what to
...
TO DACHI
Rati Amaghlobeli
When you tremble and with your
One-week-old hands seek space –
I truly know God
...
TO DISCRIMINATE
Claude Royet-Journoud
The whole of poetry is preposition.
It’s only with your foot on the core of
...
TO DOCTOR SPRING
Inuo Taguchi
Entrusting Time to the warm sea
I will go doctor Spring
Seasons turn and illnesses
...
TO DRAW BACK THE BLINDS
Najwan Darwish
To draw back the blinds and look at the sky
to see the treetops relishing the play of the
...
TO FATHER
Bei Dao
In a chilly morning of February
The oak has finally taken a grievous size
Father, before
...
TO FIT MY FEET
Kiyoko Nagase
No shoes fit my feet.
Shoes that would snugly fit me
may be hanging among the stars.
...
TO GOD
Anneke Brassinga
God almighty, I’d be well shot of you.
I love you not, nor do I love the word,
the now
...
TO HAVE THAT
Jan Baeke
So beautiful, so useful, so unrelenting
this moon, while you are sitting next to me
...
TO KHATIA
Maya Sarishvili
I get so tired,
With unimaginable speed
Things, news, my body rush towards me.
Your
...
TO LIVE
Shoichiro Iwakiri
To live
is always convoluted
it constantly harms the so-called Self.
What a sloppy
...
TO LIVE–TO DIE
Vito Apüshana (Miguel Ángel López)
We live, like trees, inside
the footsteps of our ancestors.
We live, like spiders,
...
TO LOSE ONE’S HEAD
Raúl Henao
While staring at the chicken
going round in the roaster
I became
...
TO MARINA TSVETAEVA
Damaris Calderón
The cold
of a lump of sugar
on the tongue of a cup of tea
of a loaf of bread that
...
TO MEET “ME”
Shuntaro Tanikawa
Veer off the national highway onto the prefectural road,
turn left again onto a village road
...
TO METKA
Tomaž Šalamun
If I set fire to the white frame of the house, will the flame burn
brighter than the weight
...
TO MY COUNTRY
Rachel
I have not sung you, my country,
not brought glory to your name
with the great deeds of a
...
TO MY SON
Gilad Meiri
The forgiveness I'm asking from you,
my son, dangles from a fruit tree.
When I
...
TO MY TRANSLATOR
L.F. Rosen
Here and there a button’s gone,
a collar, a seam’s fit to burst,
the shears have missed
...
TO NATIA
Maya Sarishvili
The pink cream in the cookie
Is very embittered.
It shrieks non-stop at me
...
TO PACHA
Robin Ngangom
To your uneventful death, Pacha,
the stones hurled at your demented name,
and the doors
...
TO PLEASE A SHADOW
José Miguel Silva
Now that I’ve wept my part as a lonely man,
I can turn the script over and declare that, in
...
TO POETRY
Fernando Charry Lara
When dreaming of your image,
Beneath the somber moon, the adolescent
Of those days found
...
TO READ AND TO BE
Christine D’haen
He plunged head first into the dust, bone snapped in half,
the arm torn from the body, he
...
TO SEE
Jacob Groot
Being visible did not give succour,
what was seen did not save, the vision
veiled the
...
TO SLEEP IN YOUR ARMS
Henrik Nordbrandt
To sleep in your arms
is just as remarkable and beautiful
as being an imperial
...
TO SOFIA, 19-11-1993
Antonella Anedda
Just as it is now, the olive tree on the balcony
the wind transforming the clouds. Beyond the
...
TO THE BUBBLE-BLOWER
Willem Jan Otten
Forty-six years ago, bubble-blower, the great
event took place, in the river-name district
of
...
TO THE DOGS OF KREISAU
Uljana Wolf
oh the skein of raggle-taggle village dogs: trickly
tails, stubbly legs, tough teeth fletching
...
TO THE REPUBLIC
Liu Waitong
Leaving the country three thousand li behind, you nevertheless take form in the cold clouds,
...
TO THE SOUTH
Tonnus Oosterhoff
Near Rostock the quayside was blue. In Fulda the wind was up.
The Neckar swelled to the
...
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
Leonard Nolens
I’ve brought you with me to this halfway-house.
The loft’s abuzz with voices like a
...
TO YOU, CHILDREN OF AFRICA
Chirikure Chirikure
Those stories about
Children singing and dancing
To celebrate and welcome thunder and
...
TOBA 1
Shuntaro Tanikawa
I have nothing to write about
My flesh is bared to the sun
My wife is beautiful
...
TOBA 2
Shuntaro Tanikawa
I don’t want to make this moment eternal
It is fine to own this moment just as it is
...
TOBA 3
Shuntaro Tanikawa
The old woman is looking at the sand as she gathers brushwood
I am looking at the horizon
...
TOBA 6
Shuntaro Tanikawa
Sea –
even this single word contains deceit
But I insist on saying it
facing
...
TOBA 7
Shuntaro Tanikawa
With my sulky mouth shut
again I am unjust to words
As my punishment
I hear the
...
TODAY YOU LOOK SO…
Peter Verhelst
Today you look so remarkably intact.
That smile of yours
as if a parakeet is climbing
...
TOGETHER
Paolo Ruffilli
Together. Holding each other’s
bodies gently, uncovered
to touch, to
...
TOKENS OF IDENTITY
Erik Lindner
1. All that matters is that things should make a sort of sense,
the chance to be part of a
...
TOMOGRAPHY
Kerstin Hensel
The X-ray of my aching
cranium
shows nothing
but the predictable hardenings
of
...
TONIGHT'S MOONLIGHT
He Xiaozhu
Tonight there is a bright moon
This was said by Li Bai
When Li Bai said it,
he
...
TOO LATE
Maria Barnas
I was cycling across a lull in the city
that turned slowly into houses where people live
...
TOPIARY
Teji Grover
In the park is a hollow
...
TOPPING THE FOOD CHAIN
Eli Eliahu
You don’t need any special talent to be
at the top of the food chain. After all, you
...
TOPPLING DOWN
Mohamed Bachkar
Fear not my toppling down
Which schisms melodised
In their scale’s flute
Or my
...
TORNADO
Michelle Grangaud
Tornado, Passage de l’Aurès. The post offices, closed throughout France yesterday, reopen today.
...
TOTALLY WHITE ROOM
Gerrit Kouwenaar
Let’s make the room white one more time
one more time the totally white room, you,
...
TOUCH
Manushya Puthiran
The cloth cover of the chair
on which you sit
remains uncreased
after your
...
TOUCH
Mangalesh Dabral
Touch the things that are kept on the table in front of you
Clock pen-stand an old letter
...
TOURIST TRAFFIC
C.B. Vaandrager
Beweeglijk (de rivier)
en beweegbaar (de brug)
Busy (the river)
and
...
TOURISTS
Emmanuel Moses
From Bergen they write: we’ll be back before the holidays,
we miss you,
from the
...
TOWARD THE LIGHT
Yao Feng
Return light to the lampshade
and then it’s dark
Who is it that blocks out a moth
...
TOWARDS BUXTEHUDE
Emmanuel Moses
He kept walking
between the poplars and the tarmac
went by farms fields
power
...
TOWARDS SANSEPOLCRO
Davide Rondoni
Perhaps Piero della Francesca turning his gaze
already had in his eyes
...
TOWARDS YOUR INSOMNIA
Vahe Arsen
Midnight stands like a soldier
waiting for the war’s end,
a dream within a
...
TOWER
Didda
There’s something so incredibly powerfull about bull’s tongues. They’re so
...
TOWERS OF KARST
Barbara Korun
Noon embraced me
around the waist,
black traces of earth
on my white skin.
...
TOWNSCAPE
Martin Reints
Just a moment and the man walking there
on the other side, you can see he has just phoned
...
TOYS
Giovanni Quessep
The cracked cistern, dust and blueness,
Perseveres in this noon.
We children descend and on
...
TRADITION
Benju Sharma
For years a picture
hung on the wall of my room.
Frayed, done in by insects and
...
TRAFFIC
K. Siva Reddy
The traffic inches forward.
At times it sheds its hide.
For a
...
TRAFFIC JAM
Nilim Kumar
As I drive out from home
I forget suddenly
where I’m headed.
But when
...
TRAIN 2000
Natalka Bilotserkivets
You are the train that leaves at zero hour
of the new year.
Again the same compartments,
...
TRAIN IN RAINY SEASON
Afrizal Malna
for 10 days i have been in a train,
returning and going to the same city. in
that train
...
TRAIN TIME
Debarati Mitra
At dawn quarter to five the train like dodo's skeleton
At morning nine a bird, thick rice
...
TRAIN-COMET
Valerio Magrelli
The claimant's request is based on the premise that, following
passage of a freight
...
TRAMINISCENCES
Pierre Alferi
There were
octrois
cabarets
slums
factories
film studios
are
...
TRANSFORMED WILLOW
Silke Scheuermann
My grip in the ground
was almost forgotten I stooped low
Sardonically the storm
...
TRANSISTOR MUEZZIN
Agi Mishol
The transistor muezzin rises from the orchard—
Hussein barefoot and bound to my land
...
TRANSIT SCHEDULE
Dmytro Lazutkin
today’s means of communication
lets us learn
the worst
sooner
I can’t
...
TRANSLATING
Uljana Wolf
my dear: this is
our pothole love
our little border traffic
awkward under tongues
...
TRANSLATION
Anamika
People are going away
each one from the other
People are going away
and the space around
...
TRANSLATION
Gloria Posada
Words
penetrate bodies
cross spaces
return to thought
As the seed penetrates
...
TRANSPARENCY
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Lord free us from the dangerous game of transparency
There are no corals or shells on the sea
...
TRANSPARENT
Marion Poschmann
Nostalgia for Eden. Stalin countered with the following slogan:
Let us decorate the homeland
...
TRANSPORTS
Umberto Fiori
Passing from asphalt
to a stretch of paving
the windows were vibrating,
underneath
...
TRAPS
Eugenia Sánchez Nieto
From the window I observe how they lose themselves
how they go beyond
he whispers in
...
TRAVEL
Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng
1.
east of the sea
istanbul three troupes of dogs
go hunting
...
TRAVEL DIARY
Bei Dao
Before the fire-train enters the forest
The snowstorm in the fire-extinguisher falls asleep
...
TRAVOLATORS
Roni Margulies
My first plane ride, how can I forget it.
We showed our tickets and exited the gate,
my
...
TREASURE HUNT
Prabodh Parikh
The captain of the game of dredging up
castaway words,
having weathered all the sea-storms,
...
TREE
Vasant Abaji Dahake
No mortal tree, you will keep growing
inside me,
branching in my veins.
Inside me I
...
TREE
Avoth Yeshurun
Ask her if she remembers the summer – no.
Her evening is for nest snatchers from fear of
...
TREE
Hiroshi Kawasaki
Yes, often an olive wants to be a fish,
An almond often wishes to be a bird
I am pretty
...
TREES
António Ramos Rosa
What trees try to say
in their slow silence, their vague murmuring,
the sense they have,
...
TRIANGULAR WOMAN
Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin
A large equilateral triangle
is my shape for the day:
my crocus-yellow top
...
TRIBUTARY
Leonard Nolens
She sleeps and all is still. Snow falls in the rooms
Of the house I live in with my
...
TRIGLAV
Tom Van de Voorde
From time to time I come up with a new hobby
to keep myself sweet with for
...
TRILOGY
Abol Froushan
I
You deny your own
but my heart is at ease
but have I left the window
...
TRIP 7
Shuntaro Tanikawa
The rocks are in harmony with the sky
It is Poetry
I cannot write it
There
...
TRIUMPH
Jan H. Mysjkin
There was a final exchange of visiting cards
with a whole load of people.
There was a
...
TRIUMPHAL ARCH
Tomaž Šalamun
Yesterday afternoon Giorgio dropped in
again. I took him to lunch.
He showed me the
...
TROUPIAL
Margarita Cardona
He was such a bad poet
That he did not know
That the troupial bird lifts
Its beak to
...
TROY
Jan Lauwereyns
The manifold gives us
a roof for the night for everything whatever
alleged the
...
TRR . . .
Valérie Rouzeau
An iliad ago I was a little girl
A finger in every pie
And so my father christened me
...
TRUE LOVER
Ramsey Nasr
the rose the lily the dove the sun
monkey saturn the hydrogen bomb
love’s bliss encompasses
...
TRUTH
Hédi Kaddour
A taste of honeyed apples, and of something
Slightly acid escorts the heavy tears
Of
...
TSVARNOHARNO, GO!
Ann Cotten
Calmly, step by step, I now approach the clearing
in which you will admit to being myrtle:
...
TU FU IN EXILE
Sargon Boulus
The smoke of war is blue
Human bones are white
...
TUB
Ruth Lasters
I lifted my old lovers into the bath, I wanted at a
glance the thing, the one I had
...
TUCK ME IN
Paul Bogaert
Tell me that it’s time, tell me that
I’m tired, leave all protests unheard,
give me a
...
TUESDAY
Branko Čegec
i felt his gaze the moment he entered.
medium height, broad shoulders, grey hair.
maybe
...
TULLY LAKE
Caitríona Ní Chléirchín
The cry of the grey heron on the wind
the scream of the wild goose
over the crannog in
...
TUNNEL
Paolo Ruffilli
And all at once
deep in the tunnel
that goes on and on,
in the dead air
that tickles
...
TURBINE TURNS
Andreas Embiricos
O ocean liner you sing and sail
Your body white and your funnels yellow
Tired of the
...
TURN MY MOTHER
Ramsey Nasr
turn my mother into a luxuriant garden of snow
creamy-white jasmine and roses grow white
the
...
TURQUOISE SHIP
Dirk van Bastelaere
Day has come. But who makes that
True? Not the woman with her hand
Beside a light switch.
...
TWEET SONG
Kazue Shinkawa
My big brother’s wheat-stalk whistle
went tweet
when he blew it
I wonder
...
TWILIGHT
Vasco Graça Moura
a woman lay in intensive care
in a fog of bandages with tubes
entering her nostrils and
...
TWILIGHT
Heiichi Sugiyama
Window glass is artful
the sun sets and
the window turns into a mirror
to show
...
TWILIGHT WITHOUT END
Martin Reints
A sudden resolve
while the execution of the previous resolve is still underway
...
TWO
Toon Tellegen
Two people.
One is nice, the other is nicer.
One fishes up the truth,
the other fishes up
...
TWO AMONG THE TREES
Steinar Opstad
I understand that too many words
affect the figurativeness of language
I have no
...
TWO CROWS
Dane Zajc
Two crows, black crows
cawing
across fields.
Caw, caw,
cold are the
...
TWO DAUGHTERS
Willem van Toorn
In the sleepy early morning
I see them as they ride
down the tree-lined track, side
...
TWO ELEMENTS
Zelda
The flame says to the cypress:
“When I see how calm,
how full of pride you are,
something
...
TWO GODS
Barbara Korun
I.
that god comes
heavy and huge
shoved so far
from heaven
powerful angel
an
...
TWO LITTLE TIMES
Branko Maleš
at 1 you live
at 2 he drinks air
and thinks in kilograms
here a big mouth for you
...
TWO POEMS
Hezy Leskly
*
How I loved to cross the Arava Desert
in our little red car,
...
TWO RIVERS
Luís Miguel Nava
With my body split into two halves
locked up
one inside the other, I advance
in a
...
TWO SKINNY BIRDS
Israel Pincas
I came to the spring
of my life. The ground gave off a warm
scent. From sea to
...
TWO SUNS
Maria Barnas
When I sink to bed the sea lies still downstairs
and the sun is as always ahead.
...
TWO TIMES
Giampiero Neri
The owl is a bird dangerous at night
when it makes its appearance over its domain
like an
...
TWO TRANSATLANTIC SONNETS
Oksana Zabuzhko
I.
Listen to me, listen in your sleep
(These seven time zones are a chastity belt!)
...
TWO VOICES
Roland Jooris
It is the angular
that compels the tongue,
language
squeezed
in its own
...
TYPICAL
Mustafa Stitou
Days after the circus sun
on sidewalk cafés makes good
on marriage as a prospect,
the
...