A Poem
by
Tenzin Tsundue
HORIZON
From home you have reached
the Horizon here.
from here to another
here you go.
From there to the next
next to the next
horizon to horizon
every step is a horizon.
Count the steps
and keep the number.
Pick the white pebbles
and the funny strange leaves.
mark the curves
and cliffs around
for you may need
to come home again.
(More Poems by Tenzin Tsundue)
A poem by HANANE AAD
Who will buy me Certainty?
I am the eternally anxious one
Who will buy me certainty?
Where can I get the serenity of silence from?
Who will build up for me kingdoms of quiet?
Where can I attain victory over the labyrinth?
I am the eternally anxious one
calling myself every morning
from the slumber of the continents
from the ultimate sides
to the ocean of pulse.
My pulse is a pulse of anxiety
then how do I mould for my eyelids
the soundness of sleeping?
Within me is the anxiety of eternity
Then how can I carry myself
to the fields of jasmine and tulips?
I am the eternally anxious one
Who will lend me the elixir
Of patience?
How can I win the port of ports?
Can I succeed in climbing
into the depths of smiling grace?
I am the eternally anxious one
When do I forbid
the darkness of entity?
When do I carry my soul
to the paradises of the soul?
When eternity plays for me
the melody of melodies
to the eternity of eternity?
Translated by the poetess and Peter Waugh
( More poem
by HANANE AAD)
A Poem by
Maryam Ala Amjadi
Home, Bitter Home
From nowhere
this house is three cigarettes away
They can always sniff it out
from the oil, the fathers don’t bring
and the combats of combs that never run
Short of the sun,
the women’s hair never grow long
And their wombs
are wrinkled balloons
that have never soared for sour grapes
So with all the eggs on our faces
we have deadpan omelets for breakfast
and eat our hearts out of our mouths
Then we creep in to lull our dreamful beds
Heads that sleep around don’t mind wakeful tales
In this house
the windows are doors-
that push faith to fate
and the doors are windows-
as they close on ceilings that floor walls
When owls hoot
We hiss hello to hand down dreams
Dream-dying
we gamble goodbye with goats
that bleat escape to front doors
The women draped in curtains
that sift the suns of their faces
always talk of here
that is heard as there
And these bricks have rats
that are never prey to ravens
but gnaw word by word
at our inhuman prayer
to humanize scarecrows
In this house
we hide what we seek
and try to find our loss
tip-toeing on our hands
in our tongue tied shoes
Until the telephone rings a bell
and we know that wireworms
have fished another voice into sounds
And so we saw
what we see
and the sea
see-saws
in the same boat with us
Yet we breathe in theirs
and brood on mines that explode
into minute seeds
but never hatch into hours
for the second
one of us turns their back
first fingers read the last words
in Braille:
From nowhere
this house is three cigarettes away.
2008
Pune, India
(More poems by
Maryam Ala Amjadi)
A Poem by
NGUYEN CHI
TRUNG
WINDS
A poem
let us learn to forget
forget the days and the space
forget our very self
13.
Winds that turn away from us,
forming,
but barely accelerating the decay of the soul –
outwards to the sky that does not go away
and does not offer a protection any more.
Is there still a word from the named home
country? – The remembrance causes the
inner stream of that which dies and at the
same time lives. The remembrance!
Yes, it rises over the shore of the broken soul,
hindering it to flood through in distant,
unknown, cruel areas.
( More poems by
NGUYEN CHI TRUNG )
A Poem by Vivek Narayan
My Father's Wound
Avocado trees on the moon. "Aichigum,
Mullukumb, Billy Blue Gum." This is not exactly
a confessional. My father's wound
was also my wound, dirt outside
Vedanta Hall, blood in the dirt
below the gutter pipe, blood like washing
undone in my banian fold. I am not saying
that blood was the thing. My father
was singing. From the tall narrow barred window,
the gravel driveway, in the heat, my father's wound
is jelly to the touch. I touch it now.
*
A broken tree on the floor. Tarzan says,
"Tarzan save Vivek father wound." "The shadow
before State House, he will ride his bike no more."
Once, I looked up from paper and saw the clouds
move. It was terrible, that clouds
could move. The clouds moving reminded me
of my father's wound. I don't care if you like this,
*
I am going to take my time. My father came back
from an hernia operation, there had been a mistake,
the stitches had to be removed. Every day
I had seen him shaving
in the bathroom, whistling Balamurali's songs.
*
"If you're going
to write a poem about me," my father says,
"don't forget to mention my daily yoga."
*
There is a large glass door looking onto the pool.
My father cleared that place up. Surrealism only matters
if it's real. I listen to Michael,
Mr. Mister, Genesis. On Kyrie, I saw
a massive bird block the sky while I blasted
the song from the car stereo to the playground
and the driver sat quietly. Did I mention
we had a driver? He drove me around
when my father had his wound
and could not move.
*
I betrayed that wound. I see it half-formed, my mother
washing him, his long painful yelps. This was scary,
to hear those animal sounds. My mother went in there
instead of me. Splashing. A red oval among the ripples.
(More Poems by
Vivek Narayan )
A Poem by Prayag Shukla
While a plane zooms past in the
sky
While a plane zooms past in the sky
Ants gather around a tree
A woman spreads out some clothes to dry
A postman delivers letters to a house
A farmer’s spade strikes the earth
A calf runs merrily
A woman takes a dip in a pond
And a girl gets her share of bliss
Or a sorrowful moment touches her
But if the plane happens to be a warplane
dropping bombs
all this disappears in a flash
(Translated by the Poet)
(More poems by Prayag Shukla)
A Poem by Behzad Zarrinpoor
Stairway of Wax
By the end of this celebration
there would be another one
added to my candles-a stairway dribbled from the essence of my
separated celebrations from you-
And I will step
into another poem
whose end I do not know as "always"
nor its meaning
And these candles, I did not arrange them on the table
so I could conclude in this way
how many more steps would get me to the ending:
What is the point of this contanst marking with lines on a wall
that is eternal?
I have made this staircase to come down
Open your arms mother
The candles light up one by one at my feet
I am returning
to the poems that I thought were making the walls shorter
while it was only the candles that grew shorter celebration to
celebration
We don't go up
We are distanced....
(
More
poems by Behzad Zarrinpoor )
A Poem by
Diti Ronen
Little Bird
Begin from above
Slowly,
In a blue so light, so light
And wide and big and white
Begin, with no end
Begin with the sky.
With the bird.
Look, she is taking off.
One bird, little. Look.
There she flies.
Big and open, the entire sky is before her.
Begin with the bigness, yes, begin big,
From above, big,
Begin with the all-seeing point of view
The innocent point of view
The point of view of God
Who does not see in detail.
Were there other birds?
Was there a chirp?
There was, surely there was.
There, another bird, taking off.
(
more of the little Bird by Diti Ronen)
A Poem by
Bernhard Widder
THE HARBOUR BEHIND
it seemed as if I were living
behind the very moment
I was stubbornly pursuing,
missing its full presence.
capstan of an anchor turning fast,
chain rattling. laughter.
two bags land on the harbour pier.
I was looking for an unknown
and familiar tone among
the raucous voices, loud or quiet.
could a question open a door?
some streets further:
secluded from the noise behind me,
the movement of a hand remained,
etched into the coffee-shop window.
( More poems by Bernhard Widder)
A Poem by Odveig Klyve
Ballistic
Prefix of the book:
("The mythic is a world apart, but it is also close at hand.
It acts as a bridge between the everyday and the transcendent,
the known and the unknown, the sacred and the profane”
Roger Silverstone)
You're the ball you're the foot you're
the grass against the black and white you're
the wind against the spheres you're the speed you're
time you're a circle you’re a line you're a point
you're the downward pull you're what rises and rises
and plunges in towards a vast silence
in towards a roar
forms a gleaming arc
in air in brain tissue
You are what rolls
what leaps what sees
can you coax out the weightless
a leap out of the impossible
can the incredible happen some day
between measured order
something that bursts the confines
of the finite
( More poems by
Odveig Klyve )
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