Adam Zagajewski – STAR
Star I returned to you years later, gray and lovely city, unchanging city buried in the waters of the past. I’m no longer the student of philosophy, poetry, and curiosity, I’m not the young poet who wrote too many lines and wandered in the maze of...
Adam Zagajewski – Impossible Friendships
Impossible Friendships For example, with someone who no longer is, who exists only in yellowed letters. Or long walks beside a stream, whose depths hold hidden porcelain cups—and the talks about philosophy with a timid student or the postman....
Shamser Bahadur Singh – To my Time
My Time . . . My time has been slashed off as suspire. A poet is a very big parrot, like I am. He usually has patrons. They are countless. There lies a chessboard’s squares You put me there High in air, Held in between your thumb and fingers...
Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (Ajneya) – Hero
Hero Covered, from head to shoulder They said we will not show our back And we praised that But after they fall , their masks turned down and they didn’t had faces Poet - Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (Ajneya) Translator - Atul Jain...
Bei Dow – To Father
To Father In a chilly morning of February The oak has finally taken a grievous size Father, before your photograph The eight-direction wind retains the calmness of round tables I look from the perspective of childhood And always see you from behind...
Bei Dao – Black Map
Black Map in the end, cold crows piece together the night: a black map I've come home—the way back longer than the wrong road long as a life bring the heart of winter when spring water and horse pills become the words of night when memory barks a rainbow...
Bei Dao – Road Song
Road Song In the forgetting of tree and tree Is the dog’s lyric assault At the pointless journey’s endpoint Night turns all gold keys No door opens for you What a lantern abides by Are winter’s ancient laws I head straight for you The folding fans of...
Bei Dao – The Roses of Time
The Roses of Time When the gate guard sinks into sleep You turn back together with the storm That which ages in the embrace is The rose of time When the birds’ routes demarcate the sky You look backward at the sunset That which appears in the...
Bei Dao – Ramallah
Ramallah in Ramallah the ancients play chess in the starry sky the endgame flickers a bird locked in a clock jumps out to tell the time in Ramallah the sun climbs over the wall like an old man and goes through the market throwing mirror light on a rusted copper...
Bei Dao – Travel Diary
Travel Diary Before the fire-train enters the forest The snowstorm in the fire-extinguisher falls asleep You deign to listen to the past— Construction sites lit up by lamps: Hearts cut open in surgery Someone dingdang hammers away forging iron So feeble...
Tomas Transtromer – April and silence
April and silence Spring lies desolate. The velvet - dark ditch crawls by my side without reflections. The only thing that shines is yellow flowers. I am carried in my shadow like a violin in its black case. The only thing I want to say glitters...
Tomas Transtromer – Track
Track 2 A.M : moonlight. The train has stopped out in a field. Far- off sparks of light from a town flickering coldly on the horizon. As when a man goes so deep into his dream he will never remember that he was there when he returns again to his room....
Tomas Transtromer – Weather Picture
Weather Picture The October sea glistens coldly with its dorsal fin of mirages. Nothing is left that remembers the white dizziness of yacht races. An amber glow over the village And all sounds in slow flight. A dog’s barking is a hieroglyph...