WHERE AM I?

Where am I

in your life?

In the morning breeze

or the evening star,

hesitant drizzle

or sharp rain,

silver moonlight

or hot noon,

deep thoughts

or casual tunes?

Where am I

in your life?

Down from work,

a weekend's interval

on a beach,

or an unintended

silken release between your fingers

from serial smoke?

Or a readily replenished,

freshened moment without wine,

or a moment's leave, anonymous,

between the breaking of one dream

of love and another's beginning?

Where am I

in your life?

ALAMGIR HASHMI is an English poet and scholar, who has also translated many Asian writers. His work is widely anthologised. His latest poetry books are A Choice of Hashmi's Verse (1997) and The Ramazan Libation (2003). He has been Professor of English and Comparative Literature in Asian, European, and American universities. She used the first-person feminine pronoun, which is rarely used in Urdu poetry even by female poets. The feminine perspective of love and the associated social problems were her theme.

Ancient Tune

I
One youth slides off towards the abyss

And is followed by another . . .
Happiness will soon be obsolete

A boy writes down a line of poetry
One line, alas, just one single line :

“Above the Bridge of Twenty Four the moon dispels the night”
II
Winter, South of the River

You cannot focus your thoughts or find a theme

Yaorou pork leg, the Ge Garden, Shanghai folk
The tour guide is hot with enthusiasm


Photo, please. A photo
His frozen red face smiles.



Born in Sichuan province in 1956, Bai Hua seems to have decided from an early age to pursue a writing life. After completing an English degree at the Guangzhou Foreign Languages Institute, he went on to study an MA in Western Literary Trends at Sichuan University.
He comes across as a highly serious writer, steeped in the classical Chinese tradition, but keen to apply its lessons to the contemporary world. The short poem ‘Reality’ seems to express his view of writing poetry as a painstaking harvesting of the real.

A New Song By Langston Hughes

I speak in the name of the black millions
Awakening to action.
Let all others keep silent a moment
I have this word to bring,
This thing to say,
This song to sing:
Bitter was the day
When I bowed my back
Beneath the slaver's whip.
That day is past.
Bitter was the day
When I saw my children unschooled,
My young men without a voice in the world,
My women taken as the body-toys
Of a thieving people.
That day is past.
Bitter was the day, I say,
When the lyncher's rope
Hung about my neck,
And the fire scorched my feet,
And the oppressors had no pity,
And only in the sorrow songs
Relief was found.
That day is past.
I know full well now
Only my own hands,
Dark as the earth,
Can make my earth-dark body free.
O thieves, exploiters, killers,
No longer shall you say
With arrogant eyes and scornful lips:
"You are my servant,
Black man-
I, the free!"
That day is past-
For now,
In many mouths-
Dark mouths where red tongues burn
And white teeth gleam-
New words are formed,
Bitter
With the past
But sweet
With the dream.
Tense,
Unyielding,
Strongand sure,
They sweep the earth-
Revolt! Arise!
The Black
And White World
Shall be one!
The Worker's World!
The past is done!
A new dream flames
Against the
Sun!

ABOUT POET:

Langston Hughes American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. Through his poetry, fiction and plays he tried to accurately portray the African-American experience in early to mid-twentieth century America. He made major contributions to the Harlem Rennaisance, and is known for incorporating jazz influences into his work.

A poem on gandhi - The Recipe

Into a bare handful of bones and skin
Pour just an ounce or so of flesh and blood;
Put in a heart loveful as Sea in flood;
Likewise a mind sea-deep and free from sin,
Fix on two jumboo ears,... two goo-goo eyes
Paint on a smile of babe at mother's breast,
Inclose a soul that caps Himavat's crest;
And speaks with tongue which honey's sweet defies;
The "stuffing"? Goat's milk, soya-beans and dates,
Now, cover to brim with suffering human's years;
And bake this dish in gaol for one score years
Take out and garnish it with pariah mates,
Wrap up in rag, prop up with lithe bamboo
And serve; The world Redeemer; Our Bapu.
- T. P. Kailasam (From the book "Light Of India" by M. S. Deshpande)

About Poet:
Thyagaraja Paramasiva Kailasam (1884 - 1946), was a playwright than a poet and prominent writer of Kannada literature. His contribution to Kannada theatrical comedy earned him the title Prahasana Prapitamaha, "the grand old man of humorous plays".

Path

Near the open road
And woods under the snow
A point that lifts the night
A lamp keeps watch
Upon the white face
the lowered eyelids
Upon the bare wall
the closed shutters
Ruts in the soil come together
The bridge nearer
And cubes all about
Shapes
Objects
The mystery of doors
We step across emotion barring the road
And without turning we continue onward
The house will not follow
The house is watching us
From between two trees
its red topknot
and white brow
Silence lingers.

- Pierre Reverdy

About Poet:

Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Reverdy arrived in Paris in October 1910. It was there, at the famous Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre that he met Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Louis Aragon, André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara. For sixteen years, Reverdy lived for his writing. His companions were Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and many others. These were the years in which surrealism took flight and Reverdy partly inspired it. In the first Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton hailed Reverdy as "the greatest poet of the time,"

Butterfly

Speed is violence

The butterly seeks safety in lightness
In weightless, undulating flight

But at a crossroads where mottled light
From trees falls on a brash new highway
Our convergent territories meet

I come power-packed enough for two

And the gentle butterfly offers

Itself in bright yellow sacrifice

Upon my hard silicon shield.

About Poet:

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic. He is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1959), which is the most widely-read book in modern African literature. Achebe has been called "the father of modern African writing", and many books and essays have been written about his work over the past fifty years. In 1992, he became the first living author to be represented in the Everyman's Library collection published by Alfred A. Knopf.

SECRET

The empty bell

The dead birds

In the house where everything sleeps

Nine hours

The world stands still

It seems someone has died

The trees look as though they are smiling

A drop of water hangs at the end of each leaf

A cloud crosses the night

Outside a door a man sings

The window opens without a sound.

About Poet:

Pierre Reverdy was at the centre of the French poetry and culture for fifteen of the headiest years of the century. After settling in Paris in 1910, Reverdy founded the influential journal Nord-Sud with Max Jacob and Guillauma Apollinaire, which drew togethr the first Surrealists. Associated with painters such as Picasso, Gris and Braque, he has been called a Cubist poet, for conventional structure is eliminated in his poesie brut ('raw poetry'), muchas the painters cut away surface appearance to bring through the underlying forms.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, with drawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-Matthew Arnold

About Poet:

Matthew Arnold was an English poet, and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has also been characterized as a sage writer, a type of writer who speaks from a presumed position of moral authority, chastising and instructing the reader on contemporary social issues.

It’s the Dream

It’s the dream we carry
that something wondrous will happen
that it must happen
time will open
hearts will open
doors will open
spring will gush forth from the ground–
that the dream itself will open
that one morning we’ll quietly drift
into a harbor we didn’t know was there.

- Olav H. Hauge

About Poet:

Olav H. Hauge was one of Norway's most beloved poets in the 20th century. While working as a gardener and fruit farmer in Ulvik where he grew up, he lived a grand life in the books that he collected and the poems that he wrote. Hauge's first poems were published in 1946, all in a traditional form. He later wrote modernist poetry and in particular concrete poetry that inspired other, younger Norwegian poets, such as Jan Erik Vold.

Letter from a Mughal Emperor, 2006

Nothing here’s worth a tick.

I hid everything except the heads. They respect slaughter.

They respect only slaughter. They forget the other things we brought them, the ghazals, the

gardens, the ice and symmetry.

It’s an affliction to grow up motherless, with your lady mother living beside you.

They have many images, but they have no God. They’re fit only for war.

Even the dogs are second rate.

In Tashkent I had no money, no country or hope of one, only humiliation. But among the people I

found much beauty. No pears are better.

There are no accidents. There’s only God.

Tending to his doves on the eve of battle, my father flew into a ravine at the fortress of Akhsi.

He became a falcon. I became emperor.

Sometimes, when I eat a Kabul melon, I remember my father and you.

I’ve forgotten more than I’ve seen, but I haven’t forgotten enough.

There’s only one way to live in a place like this, with your disgust close at hand.

One night I took majoun because the moon was shining. The next day I took some more, at sunrise.

I enjoyed wonderful fields of flowers, flowers on all sides. I saw an apple sapling with five or six leaves placed regularly on each branch.

No painter could have done this.

I made a schedule. Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday for wine, the other days for majoun.

Your letter puzzled me:

The people are caught between constant spiritual anguish and a faith that will give meaning to the question that consumes them: the dual substance of Krishna, the yearning of man to know God. Between the spirit and the flesh, a great unwinnable war.

Dear friend, write clearly, with plain words. Writing badly will make you ill.

Once, in an orchard, I was sick with fever and vision. I was young, but I prepared myself.

A hundred years or a day, in the end you’ll leave this place.

Long ago, my grandfather’s face looked into mine, I think with love.

Now when we speak it’s of ghazals, of metrics and rhyme or of our most famous massacres.

When he conquered Lahore he planted a banana tree. It thrived, even in that climate.

His memory is so good it gives him a second life. Mine gives only a partial one.

It’s no more than I need.

-Jeet thayil

About poet:

Born in Kerala, Jeet Thayil is a performance poet, songwriter and musician. He has authored four collections of poetry in English, and is editor of the forthcoming Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008). Educated in Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai, he is currently based in Bangalore. As a musician who plays guitar, he works with ‘Bombay Down’ (NYC) and ‘Sridhar/ Thayil’ (Bangalore).

Neruda's The Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

(Translated by W. S. Merwin )

About Poet:
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) was the pen name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. With his works translated into manifold languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language".