WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

         And the snow falls   I was three years old in the year of independence of this country I was six years old in the year of the Northern war I was nine years old in the cholera year I was twelve years old in the year of the great famine I was fifteen years old in the year of the other war When the jihadist shells fell, I was fifty-four years old I chose between the coffin and the suitcase, and I left with my daughter and my son I left my city like fifty-four other people on a barge Ten years have passed and every night shells fall in my dreams Every night sitting on a suitcase I'm also waiting and the snow falls Only snow falls.   (Translated from Spanish by Virginia Fernandez Collado)           This time of mine   I write poems to have a place where I can breathe As I keep the windows closed and the lights off I see better the dragonfly and my childhood running around in a field of wheat.   I write a...

  What name do I call you today   What name do I call you today - Inanna, Nefertiti, Aphrodite, Saraswati   The blue and whiteness of the sky in your body What terrible beauty surrounds you today Flying from one sky to another From one horizon to another The clouds are moving in the waves of your hair Kadam flowers are spreading light with your touch The green leaves are moving with the sweetness of your voice Sparrows are chirping on the cornice The standard love puzzle is coming down from the sky   What name do I call you today - Inanna, Nefertiti, Aphrodite, Saraswati       Limerick     When necessity surrenders to love, Light begins to focus on its stage at exactly the right moment, Red and blue bulbs lighting up one after the other.   There is silence for a while; The wooden floor suddenly trembles With the loud bluster of many people, The incident taking place in a flash.   Scenes change, one after another, Life...

      Counterhistory     If Odysseus had turned a deaf ear on the sailors he would have rejected wax and mast   would have plunged in after the songs of madness of those women ended like a fish   thus crossed the threshold of this world’s kingdom there would burst the song of new love in all cardinal points   we mortals would conceive children with Dream a school of invisible warriors would arise   the most heartless tyrant would lose his mind listening to the thunder of reinvented drums   the sun and the wind would give back their senses to the self-willed blind and deaf   someone would cure at the root the forest’s old plague in all latitudes the paths of instinct would be found   Ah Troy, exiled from yourself, your sages publicly shamed and ferocious cutlass fishes prowling your iron beaches!   (Translation by Laura Chalar)         Conve...

  Daffodil   The yellow daffodil that blooms only in midwinter— a beauty that drives away the cold, a source of strength to endure the frost.   So that the heart waiting for spring does not grow weary, it lays a bridge of blossoms across the depth of winter, whispering— Take my hand, cross over. A selfless pilgrim, guiding us toward spring.   To cleanse the crooked memories with its clear ringing, it hangs beneath the eaves of winter like a wind chime of quiet purification.       Fruit Diary   To eat a single, well-ripened fruit is to receive a rounded universe within myself.   From a small seed, awakening in the dark of the soil, reaching quietly toward the light, until at last it gathers into a full, round fruit—   the earth must have offered its back in silence, and the rain, deep at the roots, must have whispered courage.   Fragile beings, becoming one another’s sunlight, one another’s rain, one another’s soil, have tended the ...

  Cemetery on the Southern Mountain   Without the so-called drizzle Which begins to drizzle suddenly To remind me Again it is time To be close to f ather   The name on the tombstone Has become indistinct Perhaps my old Eyesight is dim To fondle with my hands The concave name Which seems to be still warm …   Father — In this small Space of less than one square foot Has been living for 13 years Oh, f ather Are you used to The other parallel world Which appears in my dream From time to time?   A tombstone Has separated us But From the bottom of my heart — Dad — Has the calling startled The blue bird in heaven The wind in the tomb yard The ghost underground …     The Doomsday   These years You peddle yourself to the world Like a politician More like an old hand in love affairs   These years You and the world flatter one another Like a pair of actors More like a pair of gays   Oh, these years You sleep together with the world But you have kno...

    Friend   Donated one keg of beer & they can take Davo out on the longboat one last roll through the surf.   A halo of surfboards the seagulls are wreaths. Davo must have taught 200 grommets to read, to breathe the spume.   The smokes tripped him up, he’d laugh cigarette ashes to ashes & now he’s been packed up into a typically no-bullshit shoebox.   There was a family, career. Growing old seems much about shedding. He got to pick out the bench which would have his memorial plaque. There’ll be a joke on it.   There is someone in his block who will never forget that right kindness at the most-right time.   As oars rise in homage a few tourists gawp from the shore. What remains of a man is in no hurry — beyond the cluttered air cinders nonchalantly settle on the seabed.                               ...

      Evenings   I. Looking for unused faces  In the piles of destroyed masks  To conceal  – When I meet you –  Some sadness used to cover  The continent of my heart.   2.   Being tortured by some songs  I threw my ears beyond the noisy silence. To hear the same repeated news.   3. Before the thousand closed doors  Of the palace of sorrow in my heart  I stand,  Without a key. 4. I tie the stone of silence to my head  And fall,  In the sea of sleep,  Like an anchor splitting The ocean's breast!   5.   Rising from my head,  The memory of death grows,  To fall in my inkpot. It makes the passed away people  scattering as letters do in the wind's hands. Those are the crossing illusions  In my heart,  I shall never feel calm,  Till my heart puts its anchor  In the skin of darkness.   6.   I tell my daughter a story...

  Woman   Woman bark of tree, a longing to return to the very first Word of the plant alphabet Woman ash, the thickness of words Worked by the earth Woman wave, reflection of the rock made of syllables In the shimmering silk of hesitant stammers Woman birth, foam where nestles The bird on the wrathful day of the gods Woman cloud, the swell of cumulus In the space reddened by proposals Woman fairy, a hand laid on the anguish of The world, guarding our sleeping Woman flame, like the blond open wings Of a sigh freed by a gentle caress Woman lightning, star of the hope of the first heard sentence Of the loved one, until the cosmic embrace Woman light, transparent shell of the Veil, on the continent of wedding celebrations until The bodies are alike Woman justice, layer upon layer of faces Between scales and sword, who shout for equality Woman music, flowing water carried to the Unending end of the world, Aphrodite choir of the songs ...

How much passion and how much fire Existed in the world, ere I aspire? How many lived, by fate’s command, Kin yet strangers in this land? How many sprouted from the ground, Relatives in me now found, In the circle of endless motion, Reflection, intersection, devotion? I see them standing in a row, Their eyes through darkness ages glow, Gaze upon me from a realm unknown, With hope so clear, unmasked, full-blown. It is I, their distant guide, Who must bring peace to this wide tide, Setting out upon a distant way, To God give what is His for aye. It is I who...