Les Murray

Leslie Allan Murray.
17 October 1938
An Australian poet.









Les Murray Website

THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

Les Murray

In
Poems the Size of Photographs, 2002

Petronio

Another classic.

HUMAN COMEDY

As long as is expedient, the name of friendship lives,
Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers;
When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives
But basely flies when ruin o'er you towers.
The strollers act their farces upon the stage, each one his part,

The father, son, the rich man, all are here,
But soon the page is turned upon the comic actor's art,
The masque is dropped, the make-ups disappear.

Petronio. 1st. Cent. Satyricon, 80
Translation by W. C. Firebaugh

José Agostinho Baptista

© Isaac Pereira. Trás-os-montes. Portugal.2006

José Agostinho Baptista Homepage

TWILIGHT

Burn everything, set me on fire, more and more.
Kiss the vast deserts of my combustion.
Do not say anything.
In the twilight,lead me to the fold,
you make to sound the sheep bells and sing near the wind
mill.

José Agostinho Baptista. Portuguese poet.
Translation: Isaac Pereira
From the book "Quatro luas", 2006.
Publisher: Assírio & Alvim

Juan Ramón Jimenez

Juan Ramón Jimenez, Spanish poet. Nobel Prize in 1956.
Moguer, Huelva, south of Andaluzia. 23.12.1881
Santurce, Puerto Rico, 29.12.1958

WINTER SONG

They sing. They sing.
Where the birds sing, the birds that sing?

It rained. Still the branches
are without new leaves. They sing. The birds
sing. Where sing,
the birds that sing?

I do not have imprisoned birds.
It does not have boys for sell them. They sing.
The valley is far. Nothing...

I do not know where sing
the birds - they sing, they sing -,
the birds that sing.


Juan Ramón Jimenez
Translated by: IP

Langston Hughes

© Gordon Parks
Langston Hughes, Chicago
1941

Langston Hughes
February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967
American poet.


POEM
For the portrait of an African boy after the manner of Gauguin

All the tom-toms of the jungles beat in my blood,
And all the wild hot moons of the jungles shine in my soul.
I am afraid of this civilization-
So hard,
So strong,
So cold.

Langston Hughes, 1965

Ingeborg Bachmann

June 25, 1926 Klagenfurt, Austria - October 17, 1973 Rome, Italy

Poet, writer,essay writer from Austria. Ingeborg Bachmann work crosses with Paul Celan or Walter Benjamin. Poetic language as a iluminate chance, against world horror. She were member of the post-war literature group named Gruppe 47 Paul Celan and Gunter Grass are samples of the group members.
The prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, awarded yearly in Klagenfurt, is named after her death.

SHADOWS ROSES SHADOWS

Under a strange sky
shadows roses
shadows
in a strange land
between roses and shadows
in a strange water
my shadow


Ingeborg Bachmann, Bigger Ursa Invocation
Translation: IP

Nima Yoshij

Nima Yoshij,The Father of modern Persian poetry
(Portrait by: Hadi Shafaieh)

IT IS NIGHT

A night of deep darkness.
On a branch of the old fig tree
A frog croaks without cease,
Predicting a storm, a deluge,
and I am drowned in fear.

It is night,

And with night the world seems
like a corpse in the grave;
And in fear I say to myself:
"What if torrential rain falls everywhere?"
"What if the rain does not stop
until the earth sinks into the water
like a small boat?"

In this night of awful darkness

Who can say in what state we will be
when dawn breaks?
Will the morning light make
the frightening face of the storm
disappear?


Nima Yoshij(1896 - 1960),Iran.

More information about Nima Yoshij Life and Works:
http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/nyoshij/nima_yoshij.php