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Poets must speak of their time, Czeslaw Milosz often told his students. And so they, in very different ways, do. Karim Fawzi, in a poem dated June 9th, 2003, speaks of berries and Baghdad, and of beating his present existence "with the cane of departure," while Valzhyna Mort tells us about the fate of her generation in post-Soviet (but still totalitarian) Belarus. As you will browse through the pages of this special "all poetry" issue of Words Without Borders you will discover many...

The building stood at Frankfurt's western edge, near a river, the Nidda. The old man had never expected to inherit it, he'd been shocked when the news came to him. At first he'd found himself unable to remember its former owner. The building had a façade typical of the post-war years, soiled and inexpressive. Probably it hadn't seen a coat of paint since the late 50s. The exterior was plastered in a pattern of rough, worm-shaped indentations in which decades'...

Translator's note: Shooq means "longing" and is also a woman's given name. Following custom, Shooq's mother and father are referred to in the story by the honorifics Umm Shooq and Abu Shooq (Mother/Father of Shooq) respectively. It's a wide street, and short, and anyone who enters it feels out of place there. There are no signs of life except for the old houses on either side, and the earth mound at the end seems to mark the end of the world. Leaving it you find...

Peat bog, fossilized air, loops of an evening sky. Words close themselves against other words, and there is only a burnt-out path, a pipe in ether with after-voices and after-crackles whitened and beaten by water, wind and rain down the drain, into the muddy heart of November. Slates of bark, grains of earth, and the never-ending granulation; the fields give off the smell of smoke and the shreds of afternoons flash in ponds. More words are more shut doors and dusty...

Arcades: steps toward the sun. Stone crossbeams with figures of griffins and nereids. Saint James shoulders up a prison tower and Saint Anthony stands in the door of a café where you have just drunk espresso and finished your panini. The marble procession in Prato della Valle and via Donatello where you are led by a blind boy. Gardens full of morning glories, their lines apparently designed by a Botticelli. And a woman's voice - a whisper? a rustle of thoughts? -...

I find the trace of your teeth in the foreign town. I find the trace of your teeth in my arm. I find the trace of your teeth in the mirror. At times I'm a hamburger. At times I'm a hamburger. Salad sticks out of me and mustard drips. At times I'm so totally like all other hamburgers. First layer: skin. Second layer: blood. Third layer: bones. Fourth layer: soul. And the trace of your teeth is deepest of all, deepest of all.

"Uh huh" says the streetcar, or it seems to say. When did the clock with the tune get here, it's getting harder to hear. Wrong: tremors should be caught, fixed, accommodated. How far we've come, my dear Statistics, vanilla sugar, three waters and pudding responds to the deep needs of the reader, invites him to an exchange, embodies a philosophy of dialogue. Is there "incomprehensible" poetry? Of course there is! Incomprehensible poetry is egocentric poetry, based...

The landscape is effective. We're calling out the hills. Echoes want untwining. We're drawing water from fountains. A half-open window. The half-closed sea. The rest just flickers and we are taking these moments apart. The fractured time may be reset otherwise, the other way round, toward inside. Perspectives will run into unknown directions. Water becomes melody, melody fulfills desert places after our last conversation. Melody drills the rock and...

Weeks spent. a month devoted to the study of a detail in a magazine ad. The guide tells us there are two kinds of people: creative and not. Soap washes off, milk washes down. Push the cart. For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Her house in the middle of spring. Ribbons in girls' hair, a smell of starch. The wind distributes words, puffs out curtains. The house is on flowery fire, a sparkling stream. How many times has she crossed the point of silence, the blue zone? Mid-spring reflected in water and the house is divided into frames. The sky releases paints and smears, the sun landing upon pillows. Yes, it might be summer, its blues getting hotter and hotter. Meanwhile the world's axis...

Good night, one-night flies. Bye, bye.

A boy stood on a narrow balcony in the afternoon: autumn was moving through a labyrinth of dishwashing and cigarette smoke. Pines and starlings made quick imitations of one another: a long grey zone in stripes and dots; worthless lyrics in a bottom drawer or sometimes even lower when it was a dream in which he was being led by a stiff old hand through levels of hum or rustle - who remembers? It was afternoon. Nothing special. No material for poems, just unfinished...

I got up early in the morning, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and sat at the table. (Not true. To be honest, when I got up late this morning and sat at the table, my wife asked me to brush my teeth and wash my face before coming to the table. So I brushed my teeth, washed up, and sat at the table.) Because there was a bowl of reheated soup before me I yawned long and hard even though it was morning, like an animal in the zoo opening its lower jaw without a noise, closing its ugly...

Note: The narrator is a South Korean soldier who has just returned from the war in Vietnam by ship and is waiting on the dock to be transported home by train. At the urging of a young sergeant who once served in his platoon, the two men decide to sneak out for a night on the town. "Please, can I have a look, Commander?" "At what?" "You said you'd brought back something special." I pulled the clear plastic pouch out of my shirt pocket. I removed the two hook-shaped objects from...

light, a red button in the sky (body, you tremble with cold a white daffodil smiling inside a glacier) light, dropping thousands of gold threads from the spot where it once jumped (body, what spider weaves your nerves and veins?) light, whenever you blink, the knife that cuts you cuts the December of forty-three years (body, the white blood you shed becomes frost on the window of early morning) For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Father was lying on the table dressed in his usual dark blue suit. He was uncovered, lying on a sheet, and standing at his feet was a vessel of holy water with an olive twig stuck in it. In his clasped hands he held the silvery black crucifix Anna had lent us, which from a distance flashed like a small, dangerous sign. Who had turned him out like a dead man? I pulled off my cold gloves, put away my scarf, and sat down in his chair, which had been pushed out of place. He lay there even...

Note: The narrator and her family have fled the Korean War and arrived at a small village where they are renting a room from a one-eyed carpenter whose daughter Bu-ne is rumored to have gone mad and died. The narrator's father was taken away while they were fleeing, and the family has not heard from him since. Her mother has taken up a job working nights at a restaurant in town. Mother slept late. Older Sister and Second Brother had long ago left for school. When sunlight landed on...

In the mid Joseon period, when Buddhism was only practiced high in the mountains, a mendicant monk heard that the head monk at Songgwang Temple in Jogye Mountain renowned in the Way, was encouraging monastic practice, and came from the North to see him. Below the temple, the river turns into a stream and as he climbed up alongside the stream a cabbage leaf came floating down on the water. Seeing that, the wandering monk exclaimed: 'Why, I've come on a fool's errand....

Although Mother survived a crisis and is home from the hospital she's not the same-her mind is hazy. How can I express my sorrow when she insists our guests in black suits are detectives from the KCIA or another branch of intelligence come to arrest my brother, or when she strikes matches in the living room to start a fire in the kitchen? Now she even forgets to call to God, the very God before whom she knelt at dawn and prayed on the cold floor of the church when I was...

There remained a few graves at the deserted factory site They were torn up, then there were puddles Yesterday the wind blew all day long like a sweltering cotton quilt Rain this morning-a tall stalk of horseweed looks down blankly At the ground, blossoming from the body of another In that incarnation there is no pleasure For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Here's a question we all ask ourselves at least once when we're young: Where does that starlight come from? It's been there before I was born, and before my grandmother, and her grandmother were born. So just how far is that star from Earth? The curiosity of children is insatiable. They'll grab a flashlight and aim it at the stars and think, This light will get there someday, won't it? When I'm dead, and my grandchildren are gone, and their grandchildren as well....

From time to time, climbers ascending Mt. Everest or Nanga Parbat stumble upon migrating birds, frozen on snow-capped peaks at 8,000-meter altitudes. The cross-continental flight formation these birds launched in the northern tundra of Canada passes straight through the heart of the Asian Continent. The migrating birds pass over the Himalayas to reach the Adrian Sea, off southern India. The exhausted ones fall and die in Himalayan whirlwind on snow-covered mountain tops, while others...

Winter day, under a short tree The quick hurried steps That dark cold blue light Drawn out by a fleeting glimpse The light entered me Stayed and lived in me There are certain lights, so short One can see them only sometimes Crouching low, tilting the head up

Worrying about a white horse, so white, suddenly barging into my room: What if the horse fills up the room, jamming it, settling in? What if the horse locks me behind its large eyeball, not letting me out? Into the White Horse Station enters a glowing train and dark-silhouetted people get off the train. Sun goes down and as the door opens at the abandoned house, she runs out, a woman, soiled faced, clutching her ripped blouse, and tripping over the stars scattered about her ankles. Just...

I lost sight of my child in the Yi dynasty hall: Like a forgotten royal concubine, I had been staring at the king's rice bowl, goblet and spoon. I dash back at once to the Goryeo dynasty hall, shedding the lotus petals from the white porcelain ink-water container. I scamper amid the jade-green vases. It is as if the vases are falling to one side, collapsing. A dainty crane leaping up, a young pine tree, fresh-water fish falling on the floor and I, helter-skelter. I call out my...