A drop of sky from Paradise streams A bud from the bonfires on Hell's branches A bundle of black rocks in the heart Grateful gifts for the verses that flow toward the moon A page of the epics where heroes' corpses lie buried& The past that advances shouting Charge! The odes sung by souls entering and leaving to doors opening and doors closing Distant graves approaching Girls never seen twice and beds seen many times Water in the blood, bread in the flesh, vows in the bone A...

At just that moment I was eyemate to a blind one and went among you You must have thought we couldn't see Some of you said you'd show us the house of God, then led us to dwellings you’re still building after centuries We didn't mind Some of you without a second thought told us your diaries and wives were your sacred customs We didn't mind Some of you claimed to speak of love and untied the knots concerning your bodies and tried to pin upon us the flowers that grew...

A long while ago now in those chipped years like a camel’s tail in those dim months like a desert mirage in those unchanging days blurring into each other everyone was brought head first into this world The golden oleaster flowers and the copper grains of sand smelled like an upset stomach Ugly people with no concern for their own souls would lock winter in spring and insult it left and right It was then that crawling water was discovered Everyone’s left eyelid would quiver in...

is there a zone of darkness between all languages, a black river, that swallows words and stories and transforms them? here sentences must disrobe, begin to roam, learn to swim, not lose the memory that nests in their bodies, a secret nucleus. will the columbine’s blue be a shade of violet when it reaches the other side, and the red bee balm become a pear, cinnamon- sweet? will my tench be missing a fin in the light of the new language? will it have to learn to crawl or to walk...

perhaps i was just drinking coffee or opening the newspaper. perhaps i was drawing the curtains or looking out onto the street when speech left me. still, i thought, what a rattling from deep in the wall, what a clattering in this room. no windowpanes shattered, no chairs toppled in the kitchen. the names on street signs vanished leaving only the ashes of letters. a tanker filled with words retreated above the houses, massive, silent, my swollen tongue twitched in my dry mouth. i escaped...

They await you: The new poem They await your downpour through my soul My hands shaping your features I stand with my heart agape To observe this desolate world As it falls into ruin Blood covers everything Prayers no longer know Where to go I await you I listen for your cautious footfall Yes The world has become a graveyard But the sun rises The breeze caresses a girl’s cheek The sea does not forsake its blue The swallows tell me of my childhood Hidden beneath their wings And...

What’s the deal with your face, Dad? It seems abandoned. You are not dead, but your face: as if immersed in water. Your skin is colorless and molten — the eyes impossible to penetrate, buried behind a mask of high tension wires, subtle electric growl. You vent short gusts, like those from the bellows we use for the hearth: Your eyebrows crease together, lips drawn taut, nose expels air and silence. You slouch a little, look away. Your hair is impeccably coiffed.   "Face...

The will to have no openings, to avoid areas where humiliation and assault take place. In terms of the blood stream, not wanting infrastructure, it’s the same. Sun chariot and moon chariot wheel at the slightest external touch, transporting bright shiny humiliations within the corpus and abracadabra out into every screaming corner. I use expensive drops: anger’s sweat, tablet, pastille, ointment. Balm. Brew three bags for a pot of coma. With a rock I block the cave’s...

Let’s say I download something in the black night or let’s say I listen to Iron & Wine and get up slept 10 hours hazy and heavy from medicine. Haven’t heard the music in many years, but felt like it the green grass on the cover makes me think of childhood the mongoose hunting snakes in the wet grass the house on poles the palms surrounding our garden. Was at Aina and Oscar’s last night don’t remember how we ended up watching Rambo but it was...

  Then suddenly beech woods, all green behind the dozing eyes a deer leaps across the forest road scents of acid and moss and cheek against bark, sunrain between trunks, I'm home and hear the Baltic Sea crash against big rocks far away and I rest like a fairy or a witch in the sweet smells of the forest floor we can so easily forget what we are who we are that we are, but it takes only a little call to waken the sleepers, as now, in the forest, for LISTEN,...

Translation © 2015 by Meghan Forbes. All rights reserved.

Photo: Sharon May, “Angkor Wat Causeway, Cambodia” (2009) Journey to Angkor Wat (Nireas Nokor Voat), Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind’s most celebrated poem, recounts his first trip to Siem Reap in 1909 when he was invited to accompany the Khmer provincial governor and his French counterpart to attend King Sisowath’s arrival at the temples of Angkor. It was first published in 1934 but most likely was written between 1909 and 1915. Ind composed his...

Photo: Sharon May, “Apsaras, Angkor Wat, Cambodia” (2009) Queen Indradevi’s Sanskrit composition (c. 1190–1200 AD), inscribed on the large stele found at Phimeanakas in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, reveals a nearly flawless command of the language and its complex poetic forms. The poem was discovered in the stone rubble of the palace temple in 1916. The stele, believed to have been entirely covered in gold, comprises 102 stanzas; the final stanzas are...

I wish there was a god who would see to it                that we who work in Finland as bus drivers small-town hairdressers overwrought nurses rock band roadies liquor store assistants dressmakers and decorators would never know the persistence of power freaks            the attention of moneylenders the support of legal experts that we would be spared the taunts of...

This is a smart time, I think as I sit and eat a sandwich in the kitchen. Tomorrow is sorted, the hayracks ready, the tools even stowed in the shed, your magnificent culinary creation needs one more hour, (no, bread and ham won’t ruin my appetite, I don’t want to pig myself later). Actually, I could even go for a swim, do a length of the lake, come back tuckered and hungry, hang the towel out to dry, but that wouldn’t be fair on you. What’s that you’ve got...

Förby    We have no dipping moon over a metropolis’s hills. We have no breeze caressing the parchment of an aging poetess that would cause her to say: “It comes from the desert! It comes from the desert!” We have wind against the wall of a wooden house like a throbbing ovation. We have a view from the window onto ruins that will be concealed in a few years by forgotten rowan trees. There is the transition of land into sea, there is the unsettled...

what do you write about? asked the Jordanian poet. about love, I answered. there isn’t anything else, is there. yes, agreed the Jordanian poet, there really isn’t anything else. when he read out his poem in the Arabic language his tears flowed freely. sentimental, I thought. then the same poem was read out in English, it spoke of how his family was killed before his eyes, his brothers, parents, wife, and of how apart from love there isn’t anything else. © Trinn...

Now night comes—brings prayer. It opens the silence’s locks makes the sidereal map appear and we kneel facing that immense space between now and the rim of the beginning when spinal cords are all extended. *** I look down on ships as spreading light enlarges my vision. Other ships far off rise bearing gifts. We are leaning out over the heartbeat of waves on cliffs at the far end of the earth. Over there they collect corals, pearls, call on female deities, strew flowers. Within...

Author's Note: The following is an active, experimental dialogue with a beloved poet; texts are constructed around single verses from the German poet, distanced from the original context and used as crumbs to ignite a new poetic explosion.   Nights close inside my palm,                I touch...

My mother gave birth in December. Snow fell on the river. Water froze over the fish by month’s end.  She showed me to everyone since I hadn’t died . . . .  “We’ll take her out in pieces, an arm and a leg caught, maybe unformed.”           Only a sign like a silent hiss remains from that time: a return to that womb with my child, head down, body still forming, two loops of flesh around her neck. Step...