Tuesday, November 13, 2018

One Garbled Word

from The Tree of Knowledge
By Shane McCrae

The hastily assembled angel saw...

..... And what he saw was everything would come
Together at the same time everything
Would fall apart and that was humans thinking

The world was meant for them and other things
Were accidental or were decora-
tions meant for them and therefore purposeful
That humans thought that God had told them so

And what the hastily assembled angel
Thought was that probably God had said the same thing
To every living thing on Earth and on-
ly stopped when one said Really back but then

Again the hastily assembled angel
Couldn’t tell human things apart and maybe
That Really mattered     what would he have heard
Holy or maybe Folly or maybe Kill me

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

One Satisfied Cell

from Origin
By Sarah Lindsay

The first cell felt no call to divide.
Fed on abundant salts and sun,
still thin, it simply spread,
rocking on water, clinging to stone,
a film of obliging strength.

..... With no incidence
of loneliness, inner conflict, or deceit,
no predator nor prey,
it had little to do but thrive,
draw back from any sharp heat
or bitterness, and change its pastel
colors in a kind of song.
We are descendants of the second cell.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

One Saline Pool

After Love
By Sara Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

One Buried Look

from Selling Gold
By Nguyen Duy

Our soul -- a slab of pure gold.
We'll have to sell it piece by piece.
One piece for a son, one for a wife,
others for parents and friends.

The inner wealth hard to keep,
we're rich men, but our children eat dirt,
still, we walk, noses in the air, wife in hock,
parents drowned in storms and floods.

We dream and dance on without shame
don't give a damn for the leaky roof,
don't give a damn for a son's rags,
don't give a damn for a wife's withered hand.

We'd get drunk with the ocean and sky
just to get away from what's closest to us,
the rice pot empty, we turn our backs,
worry safely buried in a wife's hidden look.


~Translated by Kevin Bowen and Nguyen Ba Chung | Book

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

One Sharp Needle

Sonnet XXIV
By Louise Labe

Do not reproach me, ladies, if I’ve loved
And felt a thousand torches burn my veins,
A thousand griefs, a thousand biting pains.
If all my days to bitter tears dissolved,

Then, ladies, do not denigrate my name.
If I did wrong, the pain and punishment
Are now. Don’t file their needles to a point.
Consider: Love is master of the game:

No need of Vulcan to explain your fire,
Nor of Adonis to excuse desire,
But with less cause than mine, far less occasion,

As the whim takes him, idly he can curse
You with a stranger and a stronger passion.
But O take care your suffering's not worse.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

One Strange Plagiarizer

The Aviator
By Shota Iatashvili

He flew off and turned out to be right:
They praised him, blessed him, bent his neck down.
He flew off again, and again turned out to be right:
They gave him a reception and didn’t grudge him bread, water and
A comb for his wing and plumage.
He flew off a third time and this time, too, he turned out to be right:
They put up with him, tolerated him.
He flew off a fourth time and turned out to be in the wrong:
They called him a silly plagiarizer of an angel.
But he still flew off a fifth time –
They fired at him,
They killed him.


--Translated by Donald Rayfield