The Sky

When you look out through the bars at the sky ,

It's not bars you see but the sky overhead .

Yesterday's bread smells of mould and loss ,

but tomorrow's smells like genuine bread .

You say : the sky is a trick of the light .

But the bars are the trick of the light , I say !

Because bars are a hashtag , just a habit , right ?

And this is the hashtag trending today .

Yet the sky cares nothing for hashtags at all ,

the sky has no thought for trends up ahead ,

it does not feel the ground where our feet fall ,

nor count the centuries and slices of bread .

The sky just draws clouds of cotton wool over time

this is all that goes on really .

And the sky does not see any bars at all

when it peers deep into the sky in me .

 --- Andrei Aliaksandrau

IN NATURE'S CELL

Where can a man goto 

escape the face of death?

Death is the sea,
the mountain, the breeze,
it blooms in fragments of love
and is crowned in every wedding the seasons tend.

Where can death go
to escape the face of man?
Man is the sea,
the mountain, the breeze,
he blooms in fragments of love
and is crowned in every wedding the seasons tend.

In nature's prison cell
they find themselves neighbors,
are forced to become fast friends:
death, and man.

--- Najwan Darwish 

(Poetry collection No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems, 2014–2024, translated into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid)

मैं जिसे ओढ़ता-बिछाता हूँ

मैं जिसे ओढ़ता-बिछाता हूँ
वो ग़ज़ल आपको सुनाता हूँ

एक जंगल है तेरी आँखों में
मैं जहाँ राह भूल जाता हूँ

तू किसी रेल-सी गुज़रती है
मैं किसी पुल-सा थरथराता हूँ

हर तरफ़ ऐतराज़ होता है
मैं अगर रौशनी में आता हूँ

एक बाज़ू उखड़ गया जबसे
और ज़्यादा वज़न उठाता हूँ

मैं तुझे भूलने की कोशिश में
आज कितने क़रीब पाता हूँ

कौन ये फ़ासला निभाएगा
मैं फ़रिश्ता हूँ सच बताता हूँ

--- दुष्यंत कुमार

माँ

सच है कि माँ
कभी छोड़कर
जाती नहीं

जाती है तो
आँसुओं में
रह जाती है

जब तक दुख
बचा है मुझमें
कविता बची है
माँ है

--- पंकज चतुर्वेदी

So

So, there’s no way to be sure.
Not about much of anything.
No more about anyone else than ourselves. Perhaps
not even of death, except that it’s bound
to happen. To you, yes; to me, us: the lot
of humankind, given how humankind sees it
from this near side. So what.

So nothing that we here and now
can perfectly know. Save, though the lens
our eyes raise, the old here and now.
The this, the already-going that moves us.
The red-shift we’re constantly part of.
And why not? Between what we were, and
are going to be, is who and how we best love.

--- Philip Booth