Pablo Neruda: Oda a las nubes (Ode to clouds)
you are the celestial girls,
silk in the sun, white blooms,
the sky’s youth
Pablo Neruda: Ode to Summer | translated by Wally Swist
Summer, red violin,
clear cloud,
a buzz
saw
or cicada
Video: Astronaut Leland Melvin Reads Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Earth’s Forests
Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet. I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.
Meg Pokrass & Jeff Friedman: Wig
The wig arrived in a pretty pink box. I’d ordered it online from a wig shop. Silky, blonde and long, it felt as if I were entertaining a movie star in my hallway. Grace Kelly in a box on my couch. So nice to meet you, I said, slipping it on.
Jorge Guillén: Death in the Distance
What’s urgent is the ripe
Fruit. The hand already peels it.
José Emilio Pacheco: High Treason
I’d die
for ten places,
a few folks,
ports, forests, deserts, forts,
a broken city, gray, monstrous
Pablo Neruda: The Riddles
You have asked me what the crustacean spins between its limbs of gold
and I answer: the sea knows it.
Eva-Maria Simms, Michael Simms: Translating Rilke
Every thing is protected
by a grace ready for flight,
every stone and flower
every child at night.
Choman Hardi: Homeland, what shall I do with you?
What shall I do with you, homeland?
What shall I do with all this blood?
Where shall I put you
to prevent you from filling my days
with damage and grief?