Written by
Rabindranath Tagore |
If people came to know where my king's palace is, it would vanish
into the air.
The walls are of white silver and the roof of shining gold.
The queen lives in a palace with seven courtyards, and she
wears a jewel that cost all the wealth of seven kingdoms.
But let me tell you, mother, in a whisper, where my king's
palace is.
It is at the corner of our terrace where the pot of the tulsi
plant stands.
The princess lies sleeping on the far-away shore of the seven
impassable seas.
There is none in the world who can find her but myself.
She has bracelets on her arms and pearl drops in her ears; her
hair sweeps down upon the floor.
She will wake when I touch her with my magic wand and jewels
will fall from her lips when she smiles.
But let me whisper in your ear, mother; she is there in the
corner of our terrace where the pot of the tulsi plant stands.
When it is time for you to go to the river for your bath, step
up to that terrace on the roof.
I sit in the corner where the shadow of the walls meet
together.
Only puss is allowed to come with me, for she know where the
barber in the story lives.
But let me whisper, mother, in your ear where the barber in
the story lives.
It is at the corner of the terrace where the pot of the tulsi
plant stands.
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Written by
Walt Whitman |
O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
born—the
grains,
plants, rivers;
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
sands,
or
through swamps;
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee,
the
Coosa, and the Sabine;
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on the Okeechobee—I cross
the
hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
I see the parrots in the woods—I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia—I coast up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented
bay-tree, the
lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision
inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe
and
trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps
the
freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal’d hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by
reptiles,
resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the
wild-cat,
and
the whirr of the rattlesnake;
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the
moon-lit
night,
The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn—slender,
flapping,
bright
green with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheath’d in its husk;
An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart;
O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!
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Written by
Taja Kramberger |
For Taslima Nasrin, in sisterhood
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe.
A place without borders and
without internal wrinkles,
without possibilities for asylum and exile.
There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe. No one
foresaw the exit from Eden,
no one is responsible for it.
There is no fatwa in this land,
it is replaced by countless
cunning tattling friendships,
humiliations at the workplace,
the disabling of every shift,
treading in place
in a thick, impassable ether,
in a treasury where your every move
crosses a laser beam five times.
The mechanisms for
the prevention of breathing multiply,
the windpipe squeezed just enough
for several molecules of oxygen
to enter.
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking, this is Europe.
A sovereign union
of the poor and the tycoons,
no more borders, but also no
decency or dignity.
There is no fatwa in this land,
but when you die, we will
cash in your death as well,
sell it five times over
to raise its value.
After death we will make you
immortal, now
you be quiet and
leave us
your achievements and success.
Did you mention asylum or exile?
Why? There is no fatwa in this land.
© Taja Kramberger, Z roba klifa / From the Edge of a Cliff, CSK, Ljubljana, 2011
© Translation by Špela Drnovšek Zorko, 2012
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Written by
Vasko Popa |
Unquiet you walk
Along the rims of my eyes
On the invisible grating
Before your lips
My naked words shiver
We steal moments
From the unheeding iron saws
Your hands sadly
Flow into mine
The air is impassable
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Written by
Rupert Brooke |
For moveless limbs no pity I crave,
That never were swift! Still all I prize,
Laughter and thought and friends, I have;
No fool to heave luxurious sighs
For the woods and hills that I never knew.
The more excellent way's yet mine! And you
Flower-laden come to the clean white cell,
And we talk as ever -- am I not the same?
With our hearts we love, immutable,
You without pity, I without shame.
We talk as of old; as of old you go
Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,
Flit through the streets, your heart all me;
Till you gain the world beyond the town.
Then -- I fade from your heart, quietly;
And your fleet steps quicken. The strong down
Smiles you welcome there; the woods that love you
Close lovely and conquering arms above you.
O ever-moving, O lithe and free!
Fast in my linen prison I press
On impassable bars, or emptily
Laugh in my great loneliness.
And still in the white neat bed I strive
Most impotently against that gyve;
Being less now than a thought, even,
To you alone with your hills and heaven.
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