Skip to main content

Words Without Borders Logo

Words Without Borders Monagram
—
Discover by Country
—
Discover by Theme
—
Discover by Contributor
—
Surprise Me!
Read
Learn
Events
About
Follow Us
Go to instagram
Go to twitter
Go to facebook
Go to youtube
Read
—
Surprise Me!
Discover by Country
—
Discover by Theme
—
Discover by Contributor
—
Learn
Events
About
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Poetry

A woman's mouth, chin, and neck
Photo by Pan Yunbo on Unsplash
Ligature Marks
By Lee Hyemi
The interplay of night and day. Deception and falsity.
Translated from Korean by Soje
Multilingual
A silhouette of a man looking at his phone
Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash
Seventh Scene
By Maria Borio
In the third scene we talk / motionless across a screen in the ether
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
The Lights of the Donbas
By Danyil Zadorozhnyi
then there’s the war / that flabby, shriveled, animal word “war”
Translated from Russian by Yuliya Charnyshova & Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Exile Poem
By Tuhin Das
Afterwards, heads of hushed army snipers / pop up on every rooftop.
Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
February 23, 2022
By Danyil Zadorozhnyi
“second time I’ve lost my home,” she utters with hatred / “officially, this time”
Translated from Ukrainian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler & Yuliya Charnyshova
Until the Threads Burn to Ash
By Aleksey Porvin
Hold an assault rifle with my hand, use my mouth
Translated from Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
There’s No Getting Out
By Olga Bragina
we won't recognize this city anymore
Translated from Russian by Elina Alter
Multilingual
The Water Freezes
By Alla Gorbunova
Your cheeks are pinked with Parnassus rose.
Translated from Russian by Elina Alter
Children of the Xam
By Khadija Tracey Heeger
Watch Khadija Tracey Heeger read her poem “Children of the Xam” in the original Kaaps.Poet Khadija Tracey Heeger honors a rich and complex heritage.Between the vertebrae of the Langeberg…
Translated from Kaaps by Olivia M. Coetzee & Khadija Tracey Heeger
Multilingual
Affirm
By Martin SIEP Muller
Watch the music video for “Affirm” performed by SIEP, in the original Kaaps.This rap performance by SIEP uplifts and speaks truth.I affirm the soul in each personI affirm the soul in each…
Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal
Multilingual
I Lift My Eyes Up
By Nashville Blaauw
Where moving out is mostly in a coffin
Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal
Grayscale image of a stack lottery scratch cards fanned out
scratch cards
By Shirmoney Rhode
and that which has no use will be discarded
Translated from Kaaps by Andre Trantraal
Multilingual
A blue and yellow ceramic bowl in the shape of an ocean wave.
Wave bowl attributed to Christopher Dresser, ca. 1880. Glazed earthenware. Public domain, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, James David Draper Gift, in memory of Robert Isaacson, 2001.
Eyes of the Wave
By Francis C. Macansantos
Eyes of blue-green watch you, / Dimpled smiles hidden in water.
Translated from Zamboangueño Chavacano by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Mr. Marcos (A Soliloquy)
By Francis C. Macansantos
The moon taunts, smiles, / “Come into my parlor, old man.”
Translated from Zamboangueño Chavacano by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Pantun
By Nironjini Pillay, Shagina Bhalan, Nadarajan Mudalier & Mahendran Pillay
We are known as the Chetti of Melaka, / Guardians of tradition and culture.
Translated from Chetti Malay by Nurul Huda Hamzah & Stefanie Shamila Pillai
MultimediaMultilingual
The Land of Our Lives
By Magin Mario Balthazaar
The fish sing over here, / The fish sing.
Translated from Sri Lanka Portuguese by Hugo C. Cardoso
MultimediaMultilingual
My Beloved Lady
By Magin Mario Balthazaar
There will be no trouble, life will be good, / Come and dance the káfriinha.
Translated from Sri Lanka Portuguese by Hugo C. Cardoso
MultimediaMultilingual
Macau, Our Homeland
By H. Miguel de Senna Fernandes
A tiny land of a thousand wonders / A flower for anyone in grief
Translated from Patuá by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Afroinsularity
By Conceição Lima
They left the islands a legacy / of hybrid words and gloomy plantations
Translated from Portuguese by Shook
MultimediaMultilingual
[0]
By Lauri García Dueñas
to the rain looming over mexico city open your jaws for us make kids laugh dogs bark
Translated from Spanish by Olivia Lott
MultimediaMultilingual
Monsoon Fable
By Jack Malik
frog cries saturate. life inundates. crane stares blacken. death curdles. ancestral winds whirl.
Translated from Malay by Thira Mohamad
MultimediaMultilingual
Poem in June
By T. Alias Taib
a field stretches, a pilgrim shuffles in despair
Translated from Malay by Eddin Khoo
MultimediaMultilingual
Linguistic Threads, translated by Alta L. Price
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.As you make headwaybetween…
Translated from Italian by Alta L. Price
MultimediaMultilingual
Linguistic Threads, translated by Candice Whitney
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In the step that you takeBetween…
Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney
MultimediaMultilingual
Linguistic Threads, translated by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
By Rahma Nur
Afro-Italian poet Rahma Nur describes her experience as a member of a diaspora living in Italy, noting how language marks the body and how it shapes one’s sense of loss.In that step you takebetween…
Translated from Italian by Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
MultimediaMultilingual
Cereté, Córdoba
By Raúl Gómez Jattin
I love you all even more in exile
Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott
You Will Tell Them
By Mariem Mint Derwich
You will say to them that she sleeps in the calabash of worlds
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
Multilingual
Say to the Tomb
By Bios Diallo
Here the poem ends
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan
Multilingual
It’s difficult to calculate the influence of the missus of the night
By Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir
it’s difficult to appraise the unseeable
Translated from Icelandic by Meg Matich
Multimedia
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
Medical tools hang on the wall in a doctor's office.
Unsplash
In Human-Made Society
By Eva Rún Snorradóttir
In order to get a visa, they had to explain to him how two women went about having sex.
Translated from Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer
Essays, or the Opening and Closing of the Okra Flowers During the Eclipse
By Alba Cid
The work of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt and his relationship to plants is reimagined in this poem by 2019 Poems in Translation Contest winner Alba Cid from her collection Atlas.Light is choral…
Translated from Galician by Megan Berkobien & Jacob Rogers
Multilingual
[My mother works in a cannery]
By Luisa Castro
Love is a work of art in a can.
Translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin
Multilingual
Renfe’s Middle Distance train sits on the tracks at a station in Vigo, Galicia.
Flickr
Stress
By Antón Lopo
I suspect something in Kinue / reminds him of his own life.
Translated from Galician by Erín Moure
This, I Don’t Know
By Samuel Solleiro
These are the years directly preceding the onset of vulnerability.
Translated from Galician by Neil Anderson
Letter to Ukraine
By Danyil Zadorozhnyi
Like the border between the word leave / and the concept of returning
Translated from Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler & Reilly Costigan-Humes
blurry image of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Petersburg behind a canal
Murashko olga, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
About Time to Smile at Homeless People
By Dinara Rasuleva
Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
Multilingual
Three Observations, Untitled
By Ksenia Zheludova
The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.
Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
MultimediaMultilingual
In Puget Sound
By Isabel Zapata
before their paths divided, they formed, together, three glints of light and shadow moving on at last
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Elephant
By Yu Jian
O, it is a defeated god, approaching the dusk of time.
Translated from Chinese by Xin Xu
Birds in Flight, 1965
By Enrique Villasis
Not as a multitude, but as one.
Translated from Filipino by Bernard Capinpin
MultimediaMultilingual
Brown steel bell hanging from a mint-green wooden wall
Photo by Luís Perdigão on Unsplash
Trial Run
By Yau Ching
nothing is certain but and taxes
Translated from Chinese by Chenxin Jiang
MultimediaMultilingual
Pegasus Autopsy
By Julio Pazos Barrera
Soon the volunteers will arrive
Translated from Spanish by Bryan Mendoza
MultimediaMultilingual
Learning Late Letters
By Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên
The dead don't let us go, I say to my friend Sirius, putting my father's letters in a drawer.
Translated from Vietnamese by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
The Red Rooster and Inevitable Saint
By Julia Wong Kcomt
“She was hot, your aunt Carmen, / she didn’t look Chinese.”
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
Multilingual
Here in Chorrillos
By Doris Moromisato
My eyes fill with rowboats
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Wright
Multilingual
Four Short Poems
By Sui-Yun
I have licked the tip of evil
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
COVID-19
By Arlinda Guma
In Germany the statue of Marx is playing chess with the family doctor
Translated from Albanian by Peter Constantine
Dawn
By Miguelángel Meza
water boils up from grouped stones, grips me.
Translated from Guaraní by Tracy K. Lewis & Miguelángel Meza
MultimediaMultilingual
My Fire
By Alba Eiragi Duarte
At light of dawn I rise and make fire, / and dry in nascent fire-gleam the space where dew once pearled.
Translated from Guaraní by Tracy K. Lewis & Alba Eiragi Duarte
MultimediaMultilingual
A hummingbird at sunset
Photo by Ramona Edwards on Unsplash
Our Father Is Tired
By Susy Delgado
a dark stillness / goes about sowing death.
Translated from Guaraní by Susan Smith Nash & Susy Delgado
Multilingual
Serpent
By Alberto Luna
I alone / plunge my roots / and outstretch my branches.
Translated from Guaraní by Susan Smith Nash & Susy Delgado
MultimediaMultilingual
[When I was born my mother]
By Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto
I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Multilingual
The top of a medical IV pole with an IV bag
Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash
Letter to the Father
By Ricardo Domeneck
I ask myself / if mother's ban / against confessing / . . . is still in place
Translated from Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan
In Praise of the Nude Body
By Mutsuo Takahashi
They’re as naked as the day they were born
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Gifts
By Mutsuo Takahashi
The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
A rainy window pane looks out onto a neighborhood.
Minesshubham, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Post-Op
By Mariana Spada
somewhere in between the promise and the certainty of rain / the bounds of things / —all things, including you— / are blurred
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
On Masks
By Yu Jian
take custody of my mouth
Translated from Chinese by Shuyu Guo
notes from this city
By Carolina Pihelgas
the window frames have become national borders, the doorknob a border guard.
Translated from Estonian by Adam Cullen
Multilingual
On Beginnings
By Filinto Elísio
Inert stone, atomic, / nuclear before life.
Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
Multilingual