She opens the window to the friendly morning / and tempts its birds

I miss the company of books / Their consolation through trouble and joy

The one whom you found by chance in the mirror,whom you found, by chance, in the mirrorin its dark side to be exactwas there, alone, thinking of youand trying to ingratiate himself with your isolationHe…

When a new poet comes, / the piano everywhere responds.

Baghdad / I will divest you of your morgue

She knew she had the threads counted,oriented from top to bottom, with precisionslanting.Some mutilated, already frayed, even to the edgestooped and sightless in her rocker my grandmother would say,tearing…

Threads that are worn through, idle affairs.The sky is an ungrateful fabric and the clouds make dartsin the cotton. That’s how I see it that’s how.It wrinkles a little more, the forehead,…

How long did I contemplate the line dividing / the branch from the water.

She presumes to know me. Or pretends. Very simple.

IWhat city and what nightsince it’s night in the citywhen a woman and a train-station argue overthe same half of a man who is leaving.He is young, handsomehe is leaving for a piece of white bread.She…

Here you are now sitting in a cafe in Sabratha

The cell. Whatever is there? / Listening a dreamy smile

Is startled of every shadow, / So let me in slowly.

Things fall apart, / Tide not turning.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: La remontee des cendres (The Rising of the Ashes) is the title of a small text, written in French by the Paris-based Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. It was published by Editions…

The driver peers into his rearview mirror. / You are not there.

One day I came back and he wasn't there.

We are rescued here the way dust is rescued / from the river.

I don't usually talk about my religion.

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart / in others' eyes.

Statements of small importance / spreading like phosphorous fire on dry grass

Life is full of unexplainable things. But, moreover, it is full of me. To be better heard, I repeat, ladies: it is full of me. From this you will deduce that I too am one of those unexplainable things,…

This poem by Iman Mersal juxtaposes a child's hopefulness with an adult's nostalgia.

I have no patience to contemplate the sea

What a pity you don't feel / How the trees bow to kiss you

I will make sure they are really there / in perfect happiness, / and that I am alone

Of course,the concrete pillars are not lacking in delicacy,and the columns of old houses are a nostalgia all their own.He added that he marks the weak pointand distributes its weight among the relatively…

One day wisdom will possess me / and I will not go to the party.

the cutting blade's coldness / gives me my body

as a silent way of killing- / but flashing glances / from eyes I barely glimpse

One day I will pass by/ the house that used to be my home.

My perfect friend, / why don't you leave now.

Flying into the field of cloudsWith the taste of sun and waterThere is no night out thereNight does not fall in the distanceA silver cage around my neckLike an unfaithful concubineI lay down and curled…

Ah dear flesh / Why do you linger here

The blood that knows to wait / Knows too to turn to stone

They smell of the earth when they cry out

I enjoyed myself in style all day long on the sofa.

(body, what spider / weaves your nerves and veins?)

Just then heavy drops of rain began falling / from clouds covering the whole of Jogye Mountain.

I felt she was cleaning out her life / and got angry at her for no reason.

Yesterday the wind blew all day long like a sweltering cotton quilt

Drawn out by a fleeting glimpse

As if the horse's mane were tickling her vocal cords, she hiccups, unable even to cry.

I bump into someone and receive a cola baptism.

Without its little spring,what would make Yongtun Village a village?Endlessly, snowflakes fallinto the spring’s dark watersand dissolve.What still still stillness,as Yang-sul’s wife,covered…

I'd like to plunge naked into that tub of flowers / and emerge with a new life.

This narrative poem is an adaptation of the rap by “El Guante,” Kyle Myhre. Read the prose translation here.she was never here the man shouts as he moves aboutthrough the office and I cant…

Dry strands of hair from the fallen days rise and / tumble, swaying this way and that.

Note: All of the poems in this sequence were originally written in K'iche'. The laughter of the waves is the foam. For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

After her son was born, Wol-nam's mother / would lose her mind

From the trees planted by dusk in our rooms that were set on firewe’ll slowly untie the glass pigeons, that eternal foliage;they’ll grow rustling on our shoulders and arms, and there will…

Note: This poem was originally written in Mazateco. All paths arrive at the only road that exists. In the darkness only mystery is transparent. No one answers, silence too is a way to scream, and I go…

The moongave me a feather.In my handit felt like singing.The moon laughedand told meto learn to sing.For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

My grandfather's steps are done; he has walked so much. Now the earth moves little by little beneath his feet so that he will be able to approach the edge of the sun. For the next poem in this sequence,…

Note: This poem was originally written in Yucatecan Maya.Child Little brother Jaguar race of the indomitable mystical spirit your…

That day she arrived with such force that she destroyed with one big blow my loneliness. For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Note: This poem was originally written in Yucatecan Maya.And the ants that sing, laugh, danceand play in circles, began to cry.She was born a woman, one on whom theythrew boiling water when she appearedin…

Note: These poems were originally written in Zapoteco.ILovecomes heavylike a weight one cannot long carrywithout cursing.IILoveis a feather in the air.Although it is also the sun.It rises and falls.Comes…

At times sleep deserts me and lest I pass the night turning over in bed I go out to chat with the moon. She tells me about the flower that could turn into a butterfly and the butterfly that could turn…

If the squirrels were to devour your eyes Modigliani would bring you to life in one of his paintings. For the next poem in this sequence, click here.