Poetry Archives - Page 2 of 100 - Words Without Borders

An overhead shot of an empty brick elevator shaft

Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

vox

I want to speak like a woman who burns a pile of old paper in the street / and the flame dances but you can’t see her face

Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

Multilingual

black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound

Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin

Three Poems

By Imran Sada’i

I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red

Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman

MultimediaMultilingual

Photo by Niels Weiss on Unsplash

vesper

By Iryna Shuvalova

do you see—the trees have gathered at the gates in the twilight

Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

Multilingual

White foam swirling on a river's surface

Photo by kallern, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I float on worry

By Rania Mamoun

I live on the lip, split / between slipping & holding

Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Seale

Photo by Levi Kyiv on Unsplash

a moving grove

By Iryna Shuvalova

go escape while you can go escape

Translated from Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

MultimediaMultilingual

Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Name Day

By Adam Zagajewski

I wasn’t sure how to pray for the dead / in such tumult, in the shriek of recollection.

Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

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

Photo via social media

Khodanur

By Mahdi Ganjavi

Oh Khodanur, / Your half-finished dance / Makes walking on earth unjust.

Translated from Persian by the author

A black wire bird against a colorful background

Photo via Khashayar “Kes” Mohammadi

Day by Day

By Saeed Tavanaee Marvi

The little girl told her mother: / I wish my hair was made of fire

Translated from Persian by Khashayar “Kes” Mohammadi

Tree of life carving at the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque

Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ahmedabad

By Bharat Trivedi

Those days of leaping carefree into the Sabarmati / Are long gone

Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai

Photo by Todd Turner on Unsplash

The Strength of Water

By Gawani Gaongen

“Do not make the water angry,” they say.

Translated from Kankanaey by the author

Multilingual

Photo by Vitali Adutskevich on Unsplash

Umbilical

By Julia Cimafiejeva

I thought I unburdened / myself / but even invisible / the braid grows / with memory

Translated from Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort & Hanif Abdurraqib

Multilingual

Photo by Julian on Unsplash

Spring

By Nga Ba

In this witness poem from the anthology Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring, Burmese poet Nga Ba finds that repression always leads to resistance.

Translated from Burmese by ko ko thett

Photo of a man walking alongside his bike on a tree-lined path

Photo by Akshat Vats on Unsplash

To Loved Ones

By Jayesh Jeevibahen Solanki

The bazaar reveals this to us: / I sell / Get sold / Someone buys me / and I buy someone else

Translated from Gujarati by Gopika Jadeja

A black and white image of a hairbrush with an engraved handle

Photo by Michèle C., licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Making of Tenderness

By Lyuba Yakimchuk

Ukrainian poet Lyuba Yakimchuk wonders about the production of household goods—and tenderness—during wartime.

Translated from Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk

MultimediaMultilingual

Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash

Anna

By Samira Negrouche

your mother like Mecca is a promised land—you must go there only once

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

MultimediaMultilingual

Vibrant green northern lights against a dark sky

Photo by Federico Bottos on Unsplash

Two Poems

By Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson

Poet, queer activist, and spoken-word artist Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson speaks to sex, politics, and colonialism in Sápmi.

Translated from Swedish by Fiona Graham

Multilingual

Fif' from Paris, France, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Near the Shrine of Saint Naum

By Najwan Darwish

I stood in the red church, / its tiny domes like buds / blossoming in stone

Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

MultimediaMultilingual

yellow smoke curling against a black background

Photo by Олег Жилко on Unsplash

kretek-ing

By Zahid M. Naser

bloodrush like the swell of desire in a room / surging higher and higher to my eyes, craving life

Translated from Malay by Pauline Fan

MultimediaMultilingual

Photo by Sunbeam Photography on Unsplash

Throwing Voices

By Linnea Axelsson

With this needle she can create anew what would otherwise disappear.

Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel

who were these goddesses

By Jeannette L. Clariond

For days, / years, they walked with jade beneath their tongues, seeking / home.

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee

MultimediaMultilingual

Etching of The Rape of Caenis from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' by Antonio Tempesta

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951

poets per square foot

By Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

we take to the poem, a miracle with no church, with no witness.

Translated from Spanish by the author

MultimediaMultilingual

Photo by Nikita Castro on Unsplash

[The sea swarms. Your shout extends]

By Claudia Becerra

How likable the island when it isn’t / more than a door that opens outward.

Translated from Spanish by Jacqui Cornetta

A burning match against a blue background

Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

Embers Fed

By Xavier Valcárcel

My mother and I will burn it all.

Translated from Spanish by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

Dramatic clouds over a mountain and ocean in Puerto Rico

Photo by Rick Lipsett on Unsplash

Onto Dust We Shall Come

By Manuel Ramos Otero

I return to the world as I depart, / having birthed another phantom, / a dweller of nebulous coasts, / a brief enemy of metaphors.

Translated from Spanish by Cristina Pérez Díaz

White and yellow filter on empty blue swimming pool wall without water

Photo by Antonio Jiménez Macías on Unsplash

verses of circumstance

By Laura Erber

sometimes i don’t want to be saved

Translated from Portuguese by Pedro Vainer

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

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

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.