Monday, March 23, 2009

780. The Sky - Wislawa Szymborska

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Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple We should have started from this: the sky. A window without a sill, frame, or pane. An opening ...
Monday, March 16, 2009

779. January - Betty Adcock

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. Dusk and snow this hour in argument have settled nothing. Light persists, and darkness. If a star shines now, that shine is swallowed and ...
Friday, March 13, 2009

778. Sisyphus And The Sudden Lightness - Stephen Dunn

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It was as if he had wings, and the wind behind him. Even uphill the rock seemed to move of its own accord. Every road felt like a shortc...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009

777. Letter to Dr. B--, Diane Ackerman

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I have found you among the texts (but not the textures) of your life, in the library of your cunning, where the abstracts of forty papers op...
Thursday, February 26, 2009

776. Thanks - Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska - Thank-You Note Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh I owe so much to those I don't ...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009

775. John & Mary - John Dunn

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John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met. —From A Freshman's Short Story...
Thursday, February 19, 2009

774. Night Morning - Grace Paley

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. To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night night nights and days English down the best it can while the mother...
Sunday, February 15, 2009

773. In Memory of M. B. - Anna Akhmatova

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Translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You l...
Thursday, February 12, 2009

772. Thomas Hardy - Lee Upton

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. There's not a chance. Too late, he says. But it's never too late for the poetry of regret. Pines thicken with this rain. Always, u...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009

771. The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' - Agha Shahid Ali

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. First, grant me my sense of history: I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and a clear moral: Little girls shouldn't wande...
Monday, February 09, 2009

770. The Children - Joan Aleshire

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(From Giovanni di Paolo's "Raising of Lazarus") Before perspective or shadows or names –– he is simply John son of Paul. Befor...
Sunday, February 08, 2009

769 - Three Figures Walking Through Grass

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. After impressionism we wade through dabs from Monet's palette orange and green poppy and poplar light hiking through meadows, serial o...
Monday, February 02, 2009

768. Archaic Torso of Apollo - Rainer Maria Rilke

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Translated from the German by ? We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with br...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

767. The silent Movies - Wislawa Szymborska

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Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple If there are angels they probably don't read our novels about disappointed hopes. I'm a...
Monday, January 26, 2009

766. Solving The Puzzle - Steven Dunn

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. I couldn't make all the pieces fit, so I threw one away. No expectation of success now, none of that worry. The remaining pieces seeme...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

765. For Thomas Hardy - Dennis Haskell

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. Start with simple things: Grass, the earth, the roots of grass. Perhaps meaning is found Only in the minute perception Of old and familiar...
Monday, January 19, 2009

764. To the master Dōen Zenji - Robert Gray

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. Dōgen came in and sat on the wood platform, all the people had gathered like birds upon the lake. After years, he'd come back from Chi...
Saturday, January 17, 2009

763. Rapture - Galway Kinnell

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. I can feel she has got out of bed. That means it is seven a.m. I have been lying with eyes shut, thinking, or possibly dreaming, of how sh...
Friday, January 16, 2009

762. Icarus - Valentin Iremonger

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. As, even to-day, the airman, feeling the plane sweat Suddenly, seeing the horizon tilt up gravely, the wings shiver, Knows that, for once,...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009

761. Nothing's A Gift - Wislawa Szymborska

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Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple Nothing's a gift, everything is borrowed. I'm drowning in debts up to my ears. I will b...