Poetry

How beautiful the letters are      we never get mailed compared to the letters we send and how astonishing the answers: The unexpected words that fall together      all by themselves forming perfect solutions to problems      we only then discover. For instance, I knew nothing about Venezuela before I began writing these lines and now I've already…

           Bell and drum cold,            pavilion tower dark, moon shines on the golden well by the ancient pawlonias,            deep compound locked,            small courtyard empty,      fallen flowers pink in the fragrant dew.            Misty willows sombre,            spring haze light, lamp behind the crystal window in the tall pavilion;            quietly rests against…

trans. Norwegian Nadia Christensen The railway station has laid its ears to the tracks Every window is open this summer night. The sky And the train. Like a far-away cry . . . Come Crossings. Stratospheric bells. Signal lights coupled to the sunrise. An undertow of rumbling trains cutting gaps in valleys and time ….

trans. Hungarian Jascha Kessler and Maria Körösy You're so brave, you camp-followers of Cain — after Baudelaire, yet! Shit-shoveling first father, your visa was validated when that cretinous cudgel whammed the wandering flock's shepherd, that day-dreaming pastor, the smoke of whose sacrifice could rise up, while yours charred on the ground. Murder — sanctified as…

Little girls riding bikes on the sidewalk back and forth past each other, scampering in rapid figure-eights on their small bikes. I don't have words that ride bicycles But sparrow-light fluttery joyful dart like drops of clear laughter from leaves after rain . . .

The power of the celestial Lion is broken, his blazing ardor decreasing: after nights of showers of stars the late-summer sun strolls leisurely like the old lion in his cage. It was the female who wanted what might be love's last encore, not he. She pressed against the male's flank, her great, yellow body coyly…

trans. Finnish Jascha Kessler and the author To the evening that speaks in two thousand tongues and knows not the meaning of war, I give myself. To the nighthawk's, the nightingale's tongues, the presence unseen of all that is, whose dreams make me loved. Their speech never leaves the lips, never stales the wine, but…

trans. Polish Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh The Politbureau, rumor has it, is totally controlled now by the doves. All they need is some muscle to put their liberal platform into action

These days lights come on earlier everywhere in the dark. But the time's too short to see you, that white of your eye. Love's like breath in the air at a mouth opened by astonishment. I feel your hand in my pocket. It's warm, warms my second Life. The mouth's talking slowly to itself about…