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A Chinese Poems by Meng Lang
THE LIGHTNESS OF GARDENS
Two gardens not far from each other ,
Crash together in a storm, making a noise
The room in each of the gardens
Rises on the tips of succulent plants
Or closes its inner eyes in the trumpet of a flower
Two people looking out from different windows
The true owners of each garden
Stand side by side in the same room
Two people, having no wish or motive for dialogue,
Wind blows away their first innocent speech:
“Let’s go walking, two sinners that we are!”
Another gust of wind---gust of accustomed desolation
Arms of the two owners are linked, tied into a knot
Two guiltless gardens, making space for each other
Carelessly injured by the same gardener’s clippers.
(Translated from Chinese by Denis Mair)
(More poems by
Meng Lang >>)
A
Chinese
Poem by Yan Li
A THE ARC OF A HOLIDAY
Colors burst in all directions from fireworks
Then arc down along the sky’s spine
People looking up are in an aesthetic rut
So they tilt in the direction of sweetness
Till their heart’s teeth are decayed by fantasy candy
Along the spine of the sky
Fireworks keep narrating the curvature of a holiday
Among the revelers I look down at my own shoes
They are of an individual size
A segment of solitude snipped from the crowd
The sparkling moment of fireworks
Abstracts everything that was concrete
In my waking state I wake up further
The sky’s spine presses on my spine
There is no crack left for fireworks to squeeze through.
(Translated from Chinese by Denis Mair)
(More poems by Yan Li >>)
A Chinese
Poem by
Yisha
THE REFUSE DEPOT
Iron bar at the refuse depot
Peering about in silence
Was sold a little while ago
Unloaded by some punk
At a cheap price.
Iron bar is harder than human bones:
It can’t get over being slighted this way.
Moon high tonight over the warehouse,
Iron bar ignorant of escape
Only waits in silence
Waits to be sold more cheaply
Or thrown in a furnace,
Or maybe a thief sneaks in.
This is when it leaps into action,
Iron bar longs to crawl
The way a snake does,
Shakily it crawls to the intersection
Where the old warehouse guard appears.
It wants to strike
Pounce on him crazily
The way a snake wants to pounce on the handler
Who caught it in winter.
(Translated from Chinese by Denis Mair)
(More Poems by YISHA >>)
A
poem by
Denis Mair
HOUSE OF DIMMED LIGHTS
At twilight the paper blinds come down
The windows are panels of milky blue.
They stand out with light from behind;
The room gathers light they let through,
And answers with gleam of white walls.
Deep blue from the ceiling seeps into the air;
The floor's brown oak is lost to dusk,
But the blond maple table is still with us.
The red of the fruit bowl is lost.
Surfaces define no limits to the room,
Showing only their faint luminosity.
Blinds translate the dusk to the inside air,
Hush deepens in the room emptied of day.
Turn on the chalice-shaped lamp,
Ten-watt glow behind frosted glass.
At the doorway your finger nudges a switch
Expecting a sudden blare of light,
But a dimmer has been installed;
The chandelier stays at candle strength,
Because this is what preserves the hush.
Glass and enamel in the kitchen
Glint from the street light outside.
Enough to find teabags in the cupboard
This is a house of dimmed lights,
Round any doorway reach your hand
Decide how much to bring in view.
A night light burning in the hallway
Guides you to ease yourself at midnight.
A Victorian lamp shows the living room
Fallen quiet after the day's brouhaha,
And maybe a relative sacked out on foam.
Pictures look down from every wall
Images of family across from each other,
This space must bear a weight of presences
Muted to shadow in these quiet times.
This house of dimness….has luminous options
So walls won't crack with cloistered energy.
A subtle antenna has been strung
Between effigies of mouth and spoon
Linking this house to the night-a ether network
Guiding its navigations in the ocean of night.
This living room is awake to vigils
A glimmer always ready to answer
Your inner light wrapped in darkness
When the curtain of eyelids is raised.
One of the rooms is bathed in flickering phosphors
Developing chamber for unspooling tragicomedy
Images pour from a medium sometimes cool and sometimes warm.
A couple rests from one hundred people at the office
They don't neglect their nightly homework in the zeitgeist.
The dimness of these rooms saves electricity,
Little rheostats adjust to fit your mood
And give enough light for you to see by
(More
poems by Denis Mair >>)
A
Poem by
Mamta. G. Sagar
My Mother
She lifts her head and looks up,
the skies light up entirely;
the clouds float in her eyes.
When her eyes are shut,
the skies grow all dark,
clouds break, and all over,
the spate of sadness.
(More
poems by MAMTA. G. SAGAR>>)
A poem by Abolqasem ESMAILPOUR
1
He sprouted from the earth
joined with the fog's yawning
What did he desire
of water and earth?
Seeing none of them
not the burning smiles
nor dried cracks in the wall of indifference
Departing
to bury his soul’s lava
to sprout among the alphabets
suspended in the air
Song Jiang, 12 Apr.
(More
poems by
Abolqasem ESMAILPOUR >>)
A
poem by Alan
Corkish
Ainsdale Forest
this stillness is as empty
as the space between atoms
as vacant as worn pews
in a deserted church
and only the throat erupted
ripple of solitary bird song stipples
the forest air with sensuous sound
that drips through dim greenery
to fade into the cone-littered
scented floor where
towards the dusked edge
the brittle beech leaves
whisper as grey rabbits pass
with orange patches behind
alert upright ears to feed watchful
on the short sweet grass
or to leap soundlessly away
from my suspect intrusion
(More
poems by Alan Corkish >>)
A poem by
Chandi Bulusu
The Princess Of Darkness
The same bustle of the dawn, the same chirping of the daybreak,
the same soothing rays; the last daylight of the populace yoked
together; a new birth for a million deaths, proving a vengeance
believed to be soaring years ago, a tumultuous outburst, a
natural genocide;
The never wanted dusk; the depictions, the portrayals; conceived
to be envisaged by the visual renderings of a few realms;
completely savaging the sketch of the first light genesis;
Voices lost their conviction; beats their rhythms; depressed
melodies stagnant till day;
After the storm comes the calm, before the storm there too was a
calm; never know how many lives strayed, how many bodies
handicapped, how many souls still fluttering in the gale; for a
new sunup we need an embroidery of different colors with darned
edges;
Helping hands walking hand in hand to build a hand overcome the
truth of the heartbreak; a few wrecking moments, a collage of
carnivorous waves, demanding to forget a grapevine of bondages,
a repertoire of rendezvous, an album of reminiscences;
Before the crack of dawn, I beg the entire human race to pluck
the strings with sympathy, empathy and contemplate upon the
shadows of reflections; the stories of this darkness reveal
a lesson lost and learnt, scornful and satirical illustrations,
for the complete lack of prudence;
Touch your hearts and swear for the victims, pray for them and
reach out your hands with
the smallest of the smallest of help you can give; the bullet is
fired and the recoil is yet to be handled; lend your ears to
this talk of the town, come forward to help the raw burning
wounds;
Your deeds of wisdom, a blessing in disguise; a stroke of
luck to the silent, a reproduction of new nostalgias, a
seven-stage drama to the psyched souls and a panacea to the
wingless characters
(More Poems By chandi_bulusu >>)
A
poem by Wolf Larsen
You Tie All the Planets
Together With a String and Drag Them into Somebody's Head
If each poem is thousands of lunatic asylums running through
your head and if a hundred people are lined up and shot every
time you write a poem and if all the poems become tidal wave
after tidal wave of dizzy verbs fighting their way into the
bookstores and if all the bookstores are filled with millions of
people growing out of the books like drug addicts and -
cannibals! – doorbell ring.
(More
Poems By Wolf Larsen >>)
Mary E. Bone’s Poems:
Secrets
Tonight the secrets become known,
Full blown and out of proportion.
If we had left our secrets alone,
They would still be unknown.
(More
poems by Mary E. Bone >>)
A poem by Hemant Divate
The
fragrance your body would give
’I’m remembering
The fragrance of ‘Pond’s Dream flower’ your body would give
And your e-mails
I’m remembering
Our intimacy
In the cacophony at Marine Drive
How we would go on talking without tiring
Can’t recall any subjects we talked about though
Then sometimes
We would share a cigarette
I who had never seen the inside of a disco
Haven’t yet visited one
Postponing my visit so far
Later you gave up smoking
Gave up drinking as well
And we gave up
The intimacy at Marine Drive
We continued to cling to each other
within four walls
Now as though we were caught in a wheel
We have no time to talk to each other
We sit reading the newspaper
Sometimes we have tea together
And if we ever talk
It’s about our child and our home
Or else about when we would return home
Making a phone call in the afternoon we ask
Each other
‘How are you?’
And nowadays, instead of the fragrance of ‘Pond’s Dream flower’
At night your body gives
The desired-undesired odour of tired sweat
Translated by Dilip Chitre
(Profile
of Hemant Divate
>>)
A poem by A K
Awasthi
FISH
iFish is up,
Down an' up,
In the middle or the deep,
Yet fish is up.
Look at the fish,
Fish is up.
Down the water lies gem,
Beautiful pearl of valueless sum,
Yet fish is up
To breathe in cup
Apart from glory of bankrupt!
The fish is light
Its body is tight
And work to fight with all the might,
Whatever is the course in sight.
Tells fish, the Brown,
Don't wear inferior gown;
If at all, it is to you
To steer way for the glittering golden crown.
Down an' up,
Up an' down,
In the middle and then round;
Thus goes the life of the fish and the man.
Boil the water,
Splash the world,
Sprinkle again
An' dip into the whirl;
Sound and fury must be alert
Washing all the heavy dirt
O'er thy body and the world.
Let you know O! son of God,
Leave behind all details,
But you do make eternal dots
After hypocrisy pure
Not the noble, but be sure;
The big may eat up the good small,
But fish is firm not to fall
Into the mouth of the grave .
(Profile
of A K Awasthi >>)
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