I am not done yet

I am not done yet
as possible as yeast
as imminent as bread
a collection of safe habits
a collection of cares
less certain than i seem
more certain than i was
a changed changer
i continue to continue
what i have been
most of my lives is
where i’m going

--- Lucille Clifton

Imaginary Conversation

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

--- Linda Pastan

From Insomnia, published by W. W. Norton. Copyright © 2015 by Linda Pastan. Used with permission of Linda Pastan in care of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc.

A poem from the anthology 'The country without a post office'

Yes, I remember it,
the day I’ll die, I broadcast the crimson,

so long of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth

bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went
on the day I’ll die, past the guards, and he,

two yards he rowed me into the sunset,
past all pain. On everyone’s lips was news

of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on his:

“If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this.”

(for Vidur Wazir)

--- Agha Shahid Ali

For You Who Are About to Give Up

Think of what you'll miss;
the voices of children;
apples, dark wine on a table;
the smell of the spring before you're ready.
Stay.
It doesn't get better, it gets truer.
Winter. Albums. Madness.
Your grief in you like a cello
in its locked, black case.

The lemon-scent of someone who has gone.
Breathe.
Just breathe and be here.
In my darkest night, in the storm before morning,
I heard a voice
that told me it was listening.
Friend, I would sit with you
and listen.
As long as you have breath
you could be song.
As long as you have breath you could be song.

--- Joseph Fasano

January Night Prayer

Bellchimes jangle, freakish wind
Whistles icy out of desert lands
over the mountains. Janus, Lord
of winter and beginnings, riven
and shaken, with two faces,
watcher at the gates of winds and cities,
god of the wakeful:
keep me from coldhanded envy,
and petty anger. Open
my soul to the vast
dark places. Say to me, say again
nothing is taken, only given.

--- Ursula K. Le Guin

We Have Not Long to Love

We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.

The tender things are those
we fold away.

Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.

In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.

Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.

I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.

I could, but do not, break
that which is still.

(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)

So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.

We have not long to love.
A night. A day....

--- Tennessee Williams

Black Maps

Not the attendance of stones, 

nor the applauding wind, 

shall let you know 

you have arrived, 

not the sea that celebrates 

only departures, 

nor the mountains, 

nor the dying cities. 

Nothing will tell you 

where you are. 

Each moment is a place 

you’ve never been. 

You can walk believing 

you cast 

a light around you. 

But how will you know? 

The present is always dark.

Its maps are black, 

rising from nothing, 

describing, 

in their slow ascent 

into themselves, 

their own voyage, 

its emptiness, 

the bleak, 

temperate necessity of its completion. 

As they rise into being 

they are like breath. 

And if they are studied at all it is only to find, 

too late, 

what you thought were 

concerns of yours do not exist. 

Your house is not marked on any of them, 

nor are your friends, 

waiting for you to appear, 

nor are your enemies, listing your faults. 

Only you are there, 

saying hello to what you will be, 

and the black grass is holding 

up the black stars.

--- Mark Strand

Let July be July

Even here, you are growing.
When August is approaching
and you feel a little restless
thinking about how
this month might end
and how
this year might end
and how you are supposed to
start again,
you are growing,
you are growing,
in grace
courage
strength.

And it is okay
if it does not feel like it.
It is okay if there are moments
where you cannot see
the way you have grown,
because far beneath the surface
the seeds have still been sown.
The ground beneath your feet
is still a bed for new beginnings.

So much is changing around you
but you are changing, too.

You are so much more than the brokenness
that you were certain would define you.

It has not been easy for you.
You have worked so hard
to be the positive one.
You have given your best
in areas of your life
where the effort was not returned.
And this has made it so hard
for you to keep going,
and there have been days
where you were not sure
if it was even possible.
But after everything,
here you are,
just a little stronger,
holding on a little longer,
and you still found room for hope.

So take heart
breathe deep
you are still becoming
who you were meant to be.

Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And let yourself

just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.

--- Morgan Harper Nichols

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--- Elizabeth Bishop

स्वर्ग की सराय

लाखों मारे गए, जबकि हर कोई निर्दोष था।
मैं अपने कमरे तक महदूद था। 

राष्ट्राध्यक्ष ने युद्ध का ऐसा बखान किया

जैसे हो कोई जादुई प्रेम-रस।
मेरी आँखें आश्चर्य से खुली की खुली रह गई थीं।

आईने में मेरा चेहरा ऐसा लगा मुझे
गोया मैं कोई डाक टिकट हूँ
जिसे डाकख़ाने ने दो बार रद्द कर दिया हो।
मैं ठीक से रहा, लेकिन ज़िंदगी भयानक थी।
उस दिन कितने सारे सैनिक थे
और शरणार्थियों की अपार भीड़ थी सड़क पर।

ज़ाहिर है, वे सब मिटा दिए गए
उँगली की एक हरकत से।
इतिहास ने अपने मुँह के ख़ून लगे कोरों को धीरे से चाट लिया।

बिके हुए चैनल पर, एक आदमी और एक औरत
कामातुर चुम्बनों में लीन थे
और एक दूसरे के कपडे फाड़े जा रहे थे
जबकि मैं चुपचाप देखता जा रहा था
आवाज़ बंद कर—कमरे के अँधेरे में
बस स्क्रीन रह-रह चमक उठती थी
जहाँ बहुत ज़्यादा था सुर्ख़ लाल रंग
या ज़रूरत से ज़्यादा रंग गुलाबी।

- चार्ल्स सिमिक
अँग्रेज़ी से अनुवाद : सत्यार्थ अनिरुद्ध पंकज

How to Do Absolutely Nothing

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin

but: Do not take your walking shoes.

Don’t take any clothes you’d wear

anyplace anyone would see you.

Don’t take your rechargeables.

Take Scrabble if you have to,

but not a dictionary and no

pencils for keeping score.

Don’t take a cookbook

or anything to cook.

A fishing pole, ok

but not the line,

hook, sinker,

leave it all.

Find out

what’s

left.

--- Barbara Kingsolver

Democracy Poem #1

Tell them that I stood
in line
and I waited
and I waited
like everybody
else

But I never got
called
And I keep that scrap
of paper
in my pocket

just in case

--- June Jordan

Stationery

The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.

The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.

The world is full of paper.
Write to me.

--- Agha Shahid Ali
(The Half-Inch Himalayas, 1987)

लाल ज़री - Varieties of Ghazal: Poems of the Middle East

लाल ज़री
अरबी लोगों में कहावत थी कि
जब कोई अजनबी दस्तक दे तुम्हारे दरवाज़े पर,
तो उसे तीन दिनों तक खिलाओ-पिलाओ…
यह पूछने से पहले कि वह कौन है,
कहाँ से आया है,
कहाँ को जाएगा।
इस तरह, उसके पास होगी पर्याप्त ताक़त
जवाब देने के लिए।
या फिर, तब तक तुम बन जाओगे
इतने अच्छे मित्र
कि तुम परवाह नहीं करोगे।

चलो फिर लौट जाएँ वहीं।
चावल? चिलगोज़े?
यहाँ, लो यह लाल ज़री वाला तकिया।
मेरा बच्चा पानी पिला देगा
तुम्हारे घोड़े को।

नहीं, मैं व्यस्त नहीं था जब तुम आए!
मैं व्यस्त होने की तैयारी में भी नहीं था।
यही आडंबर ओढ़ लेते हैं सब
यह दिखाने के लिए उनका कोई उद्देश्य है
इस दुनिया में।

मैं ठुकराता हूँ सभी दावे।
तुम्हारी थाली प्रतीक्षारत है।
चलो हम ताज़ा पुदीना घोलते हैं
तुम्हारी चाय में।

--- नाओमी शिहाब नाइ
‘वैराइटीज़ ऑफ़ ग़ज़ाले : पोएम्ज़ ऑफ़ द मिडिल ईस्ट’ से
अँग्रेज़ी से अनुवाद : पल्लवी व्यास

All Your Horses

Say when rain
cannot make
you more wet
or a certain
thought can’t
deepen and yet
you think it again:
you have lost
count. A larger
amount is
no longer a
larger amount.
There has been
a collapse; perhaps
in the night.
Like a rupture
in water (which
can’t rupture
of course). All
your horses
broken out with
all your horses.

--- Kay Ryan

Traveling through the Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

--- William Stafford

September

Then the flowers became very wild

because it was early September

and they had nothing to lose

they tossed their colors every

which way over the garden wall

splattering the lawn shoving their

wild orange red rain-disheveled faces

into my window without shame

--- Grace Paley, from Begin Again: Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001)

No Explosions

To enjoy

fireworks,

you would have

to have lived

a different kind

of life.

--- Naomi Shihab Nye

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

--- Linda Pastan

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--- Robert Frost