Chirag Bangdel / Everything Has A Reason

Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh

EVERYTHING HAS A REASON
TODO TIENE UNA RAZÓN

By Chirag Bangdel
BIOGRAPHY

....everything has a reason,
even darkness.
If it was not for the night,
would you see the stars?

Chirag Bangdel / Two Poems

TWO POEMS
DOS POEMAS

by Chirag Bangdel

Solitude

A flickering diyo light
is all that remains.
A dark night
and a lonely temple.
No pilgrims,
no priests,
no devotees.

The deity finally rests
among fermenting flowers

Poem

White,
perfect white.
Like silence of the night,
expectant
and nervous.
Cold
as if frozen.
Virgin and flawless.
The white sheet of paper.

Is my poetry really good enough for this?

Raymond Carver / Happiness

HAPPINESS

By Raymond Carver
BIOGRAPHY

So early it's still almost dark out.

I'm near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other's arm.

It's early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver / My Crow and other poems

Raymond Carver / Your Dog Dies

Raymond Carver / Happiness

Raymond Carver / All Her Life

Raymond Carver / Fear

Raymond Carver / Poems

Raymond Carver / Late Fragment

Raymond Carver / Your Dog Dies

Your Dog Dies

By Raymond Carver

BIOGRAPHY

 it gets run over by a van.
 
you find it at the side of the road 
and bury it.
 
you feel bad about it.
 
you feel bad personally, 
but you feel bad for your daughter 
because it was her pet, 
and she loved it so.
 
she used to croon to it 
and let it sleep in her bed.
 
you write a poem about it.
 
you call it a poem for your daughter, 
about the dog getting run over by a van 
and how you looked after it, 
took it out into the woods 
and buried it deep, deep, 
and that poem turns out so good 
you're almost glad the little dog 
was run over, or else you'd never 
have written that good poem.
 
then you sit down to write 
a poem about writing a poem 
about the death of that dog, 
but while you're writing you 
hear a woman scream 
your name, your first name, 
both syllables, 
and your heart stops.
 
after a minute, you continue writing.
 
she screams again.
 
you wonder how long this can go on.

Raymond Carver / My Crow and other poems

Raymond Carver / Your Dog Dies

Raymond Carver / Happiness

Raymond Carver / All Her Life

Raymond Carver / Fear

Raymond Carver / Poems

Raymond Carver / Late Fragment

Chirag Bangdel / Load Shedding

Load Shedding
EL DARRAME DE LA CARGA

By Chirag Bangdel
BIOGRAPHY
Translated by Susan Schwartz Senstad

Darkness

that unifies all.

Darkness

cold but just.

No shapes

sizes,

colors.

An equal black.

Vain beauty

you are but  for the light!



Ezra Pound / Alba

ALBA
by Ezra Pound

As cool as the pale wet leaves

of lily-of-the-valley

She lay beside me in the dawn.

 

Elizabeth Bishop / One Art

Photography by Alejandro Zenker

ONE ART

by Elizabeth Bishop

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

ONE ART

One Art is another villanelle. It was written by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) after the death of her partner Lota de Macedo Soares. The two women lived together in Brazil for 15 years, and Soares committed suicide after Bishop left her and returned to America.

Bishop was a slow, meticulous writer, and some poems took more than 20 years to finish. I’ve seen the original drafts of this poem (by a professor who snuck photocopies out of Vassar’s library where Bishop’s papers are kept). The first draft was a journal entry. By the second draft, it was beginning to take shape as a villanelle. The final product came 22 drafts later.

http://bluedragonfly10.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/poem-of-the-day-nov-7/#more-49

Triunfo Arciniegas / Grandfather

El señor del sombrero
Medellín, 2011
Photography by Triunfo Arciniegas

Triunfo Arciniegas

GRANDFATHER

Translated from Spanish by C.D. Hernández
EL ABUELO

In his old age

he washed his eyes

with rose petal water.

Took naps

under the shade of a tree

and he would tell us stories

about horses lost in the fog

of deer trembling in water

of a house that burned all night.

"Time passes

like a ball of fire "

he once said.

The shadow of

his hat on his face

the ember of snuff,

the palm of his hand on my shoulder.

With a dry blow on the neck

he would send rabbits

to another world.

Garlic fasting

and a chair in the patio,

the secrets of my old man.

For my birthday

he opened the trunk,

his world,

he chose something

and judging by the way he held it

I understood that it was something he loved

a colorful top

which I still I have.

Carlos de Oliveira / An Instant



Karina Marandjian

An Instant

By Carlos de Oliveira

This column
of firmer syllables,
this flame
on the summit of the dunes
flaring
for just a moment,
this balance
so close to beauty,
this poem
just before
the wind.

Carlos de Oliveira / Chilhood

Childhood

By Carlos de Oliveira
BIOGRAPHY

Dreams
as large as cedars
that must
be brought from afar
on shoulders
to find
in the winter of memory
this crackle
of a flame:
your fragrance,
firewood
of melancholy.

Lucía Estrada / The Mask of Bone

THE MASK OF BONE

By Lucía Estrada

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

The mask of bone
refuses to reveal

                             if the features it hides
                             are those of a god

or of a beast

                             or of both, which, after death,
                             continue fighting
                             for the same crown

Derek Walcott / Sea Canes

SEA CANES

By Derek Walcott

CAÑAVERAL MARINO

Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion

of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.

The sea canes by the cliff  flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight,  further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing caves

brings those we love before  us as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

Collected Poems 1948-1984
originally published in Sea Grapes

Orlando Gallo / Goodbye

Madre e hijo
Gustav Klimt

GOODBYE

By Orlando Gallo

ADIÓS

Today my daughter drew with her finger in the air

an incipient goodbye

towards me over her mother’s shoulder.

We celebrated I for a long while

that first real gesture she made

even though it  provides evidence of a harsh reality:

Life trains us early

for farewells.