Ma Yongbo: Responding to My Deceased Father’s Order at Night (English & Chinese)
At last, we arrive at the small town of Sifangtai,
only my father stands there,
at the crossroads shrouded in thin mist
Helen Pletts: In the Presence of Things Flying Slower in a Grey Dusk (4 Poems in English and Chinese)
Rain from the Tang dynasty has re-surged,
all feelings gather in a fine mist, and lighter still is the joy of rain as a witness
to the landscape of fear fleeing like mist up the mountainside
Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese
No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.
Barbara Crooker: Climbing the Eiffel Tower at Night
We climb into this ladder of light.
Ma Yongbo: A Dream at the Beginning of Winter (English & Chinese)
The broad leaves of the sycamore tree fall onto the small car,
once all the leaves have fallen, the car’s colour turns white,
receiving signals from the stars of the departed
Wang Jiaxin: Two Poems
Walking down the scorching streets of Moscow,
Osip turned to Anna and said:
“I’m ready to die.”
Rimbaud said that every poem is the last.
Lao Yang: “Magnolia” by Michael Simms, translated into Chinese and recited 《玉兰》
Suppose you held what you love so tightly
you broke it
Suppose you let something slip away
Ma Yongbo: Your Voice
Your voice, echoing in the narrow and dark corridor,
continuously echoing, warm and bright,
as if beyond this ordinary dusk
there is no hunger, toil and separation in the world.
Emma Grover: Finding Sappho | Four translations in conversation
In this article, I review four translations of Sappho produced over the past six decades.
Tadeusz Dabrowski: The Sentence
It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and found
in your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentence in a language you don’t know.
Barbara Huntington: Lost in Translation | Thoughts on Poetry After My Stroke
Then I became an erasure poem.
Aidan Rooney: Bel-Air by Louis-Philippe Dalembert
those alleys seven times knifed then again then always
to be part of the tight knit gathered round over a sewer cover
to watch as they germinate
the stars no one of us had sown
Deborah Bogen: Three poems by Yongbo Ma
…thunder is like a guarantee that everything exists,
that the wine will not sour,
that the season will turn again,
as it always has.
Piedad Bonnett: Two Poems (with translations)
Someone is telling us an old tale —
someone is sobbing and praying
to be given a pair of wings.
