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Memory

A photo of a power kite flying high in the sky as the sun sets. In the right corner there is a...
Photo by Photo by Kürşad Karaağaç from Pexels. Public domain.
You Exist to Dream
By Zuhair Abu Shayeb
Jordanian poet Zuhair Abu Shayeb questions the limitations of history, water, and the past in this fervent poem.
Translated from Arabic by Miled Faiza & Karen McNeil
Multilingual
A subtle spiderweb pattern on a greenish-gray background
Sidewall - sample. Gift of Dorwin L. Starr. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Public domain.
Story—Late Summer or Early Fall
By Yoo Heekyung
The spider is hiding, why don’t you try touching the spiderweb
Translated from Korean by Stine An
MultimediaMultilingual
A woman looks out the windows of a slightly dilapidated white brick building.
Kalpana Raina stands in the window of her uncle's former home. Photo by Tanveer Ajsi.
Reclaiming Memories: Returning to Kashmir
By Kalpana Raina
How is it possible that a place you haven’t seen for decades can match your memory when you finally visit it?
Multimedia
Clasped hands
Photo by Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash
The Last Letter of My Body
By Alex Averbuch
gardens are in bloom: cherries, oranges, mandarins / I talked through three phone cards in three days
Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher
Multilingual
Pedestrians walk over a bridge in Leningrad in 1991.
fdecomite, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Book of Conjuring
By Anna Badkhen
Thirty years had passed: who can recall all the minutiae of such a long-ago heartbreak?
Multimedia
Photo of rocks and brush in Fitatimen, Río Negro
Photo: Liliana Ancalao
I Write to Purge This Memory
By Liliana Ancalao
Liliana Ancalao honors her Mapuche identity and records the violence the state committed against her people in the Conquest of the Desert and Occupation of Araucanía, violence that continues to this day.
Translated from Spanish by Liliana Ancalao & Seth Michelson
Multilingual
A colored floral illustration on paper
Detail of “Leopard Bearing Lion's Order to Fellow Judges", Folio 51 recto from a Kalila wa Dimna. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Alice and Nasli Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Alice Heeramaneck, 1981
All It Seems
By Befaam
Even grief now becomes / a kind of delight, or so it seems.
Translated from Gujarati by Meena Desai
Multilingual
The White Tablecloth
By Irene Solà
Eight years and I’m still not over it.
Translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
War of the Species
By Michel Nieva
Completely unaware that this was the kind of sacred moment when you pledge your undying allegiance to a team, through thick and thin, I stated my choice.
Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery
Cereté, Córdoba
By Raúl Gómez Jattin
I love you all even more in exile
Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott
A wrecked wooden ship lying on its side, half-buried in the sand
Photo by Tradd Harter on Unsplash
Sinkings
By Haukur Ingvarsson
the glacier is black / polar bears run on hot sand
Translated from Icelandic by Meg Matich
Multimedia
Writing Against Estrangement in Galicia
By Scott Shanahan
No doubt a few Galicians will think it in very bad taste to inaugurate this issue with a likeness to their higher profile southern neighbors, but because there may be a great many glad for the comparison,…
Three Observations, Untitled
By Ksenia Zheludova
The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.
Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
MultimediaMultilingual
Here in Chorrillos
By Doris Moromisato
My eyes fill with rowboats
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright
Multilingual
Özdamar’s Tongue
By Mariana Oliver
Özdamar knew that arriving in a country with no return ticket meant voluntarily surrendering to an indeterminate foreignness.
Translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches
See-the-Sea
By Dina Salústio
Are all of us accidents wandering through other people’s lives?
Translated from Portuguese by Nina Perrotta
Cabo Verde Is the Center of the World
By Germano Almeida
In those days the island of Boa Vista was the whole world.
Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan
The Poem
By Mohsen Emadi
the poem is riding a bicycle; / trembling and in haste.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé
Learn
“I Write in French to Tell the French I Am Not French”: Algerian Francophone Poetry
By Marilyn Hacker
Algerian Francophone poetry was largely outside, and in contrast to, the post-World War II movement in French poetry of disengagement from political causes.
Beneath a Pile of Rubble
By Djamal Amrani
Because death is stronger than hunger
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
The Tartar from the Kremlin
By Habib Tengour
This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Celebration of the Absent One
By Habib Tengour
The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
A shadowy orange canyon with twisting rock formations
Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash
In the Shadow of Grenada
By Samira Negrouche
She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
Minus One
By Samira Negrouche
I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
MultimediaMultilingual
From “The Night Inside”
By Djamal Amrani
The slumber at the edge/ of my well of fever
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
Standing on Ashes: Three Punjabi Poets on Aging
By Sonnet Mondal
Punjabi poetry stands on ashes, reinforced by a blend of spirituality and dissent.
While I Slept
By Navtej Bharati
I will not accept this old age / grafted slyly on my body.
Translated from Punjabi by the author
Mustard Flowers
By Ajmer Rode
Morning starts / when lights turn green.
Translated from Punjabi by the author
A metal bowl against a white background
Khalili Collections / CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons
“Chhanna,” the Metal Bowl
By Amarjit Chandan
Contemplating a family heirloom, a ruminative Amarjit Chandan finds the past staring back at him.
Translated from Punjabi by Sarabjeet Garcha
It’s Cold and It’s Getting So Dark
By Carmen-Francesca Banciu
I can’t sit up any more, she said. I can only lie in bed.
Translated from German by Elena Mancini
The House of Wax
By Subodh Ghosh
“Have you been able to forget me?”
Translated from Bengali by Somrita Ganguly
Please Enter Destination
By Tereza Semotamová
That piece of junk is driving me crazy!
Translated from Czech by Barbora Růžičková
Multimedia
That Deep Ocean…
By Ana Candida de Carvalho Carneiro
This month, we bring you the first of three winning entries in the Words without Borders - Play for Voices Radio Drama Contest.
Translated from Italian by Stephen Pidcock
The Memory
By Mitsuyo Kakuta
And then what did you do, he asked, and she said, I watched.
Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton
Learn
Green Sour Orange
By Neda Kavoosifar
With his eyes bulging, Mr. Moadab murmurs, It’s like silk . . .
Translated from Persian by Sara Khalili
LearnMultilingual
Crying over Light Green
By Ra Heeduk
No, the word “green” is hardly adequate.
Translated from Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Christopher Merrill
An Interview with Hisham Matar
By Nouri Gana
Nouri Gana talks to Hisham Matar about poetry, beards, and his novel In the Country of Men.
Damascus, What Are You Doing to Me?
By Nizar Qabbani
How do the gardens of Sham transform me?
Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani
Nabokov in Brasov
By Mircea Cărtărescu
I was asked to join Securitate.
Translated from Romanian by Julian Semilian
From “Portrait of M”
By Matei Călinescu
Anyone's death is a great tragedy.
Translated from Romanian by Angela Jianu
Photo of the Oudezijds Kolk canal in Amsterdam
Bert Kaufmann from Roermond, Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From “The Ministry of Pain”
By Dubravka Ugrešic
Instead of talking, they seem to be patting each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.
Translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim
The Other Body / The Other Home
By Adonis
Migration is another name for exile made gentler by the alphabet.
Translated from Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay & Kamal Boullata
Elegy
By Ahmad Shamlou
And so we repeat the round / of night and day
Translated from Persian by Zara Houshmand
Learn
An Empty Room
By MuXin
Was there anything else worth seeing? Why was I the only one hiking?
Translated from Chinese by Toming Jun Liu