Summer - Cesare Pavese
A garden between low walls, bright,
Made of dry grass and a light that slowly bakes
The ground below. The light smells of sea.
You breathe that grass. You touch your hair
And shake out the memory of grass.
I have seen ripe
Fruit dropping thickly on remembered grass with a soft Thudding. So too the pulsing of the blood Surprises even you. You move your head As though a miracle of air had happened around you, And the miracle is you. Your eyes have a savor Like the heat of memory.
You listen.
You listen to the words, but they barely graze you. Your face has a radiance of thought that shines Around your shoulders, like light from the sea. The silence In your face touches the heart with a soft Thud, exuding drop by drop, Like fruit that fell here years ago, an old pain still.
Translanted from the Italian by Arrowsmith
Big Book Of Poetry
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To The Soul - W.S. Merwin
Is anyone there
if so
are you real
either way are you
one or several
if the latter
are you all at once
or do you
take turns not answering
is your answer the question itself surviving the asking without end whose question is it how does it begin where does it come from how did it ever find out about you over the sound of itself with nothing but its own ignorance to go by
Big Book Of Poetry
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Dear Fahimeh - Anon
Translated by Hubert Moore and Nasrin Parvez
The poem, originally in Farsi, is for Fahimeh Taghadosi, executed in Iran, 1982. The writer is unknown. Farkhondeh Ashena, who recently escaped from Iran, heard it when she was in solitary confinement, and memorised it.
Dear Fahimeh
That day, that hot day in July, when the Evin loudspeakers called out your beautiful name and your lips smiled, your eyes said to your friends, 'So today is the day.'
You went and your walk was a perfume filling the corridor. Everyone gasped, everyone asked with their eyes, 'Is today then the day?' The Pasdar flung back an answer : 'Where is her bag? Where are her veil, her socks, her money?'
A rumour went round that you'd given a sign that yes, today was the day : 'I don't need my food,' you had said.
So tonight is the night. A silence hangs in the heart of it. Friends look at friends and tell themselves that perhaps you'll come back.
Fahimeh dear, tell us, spare a word for your friends. Is the sky sad where you are, does it weep? And the wind, does it ruffle your veil? Back here, the ward sweats for your news.
And a message gets through : wind-blown breathless dandelion comes from the mountains to say that clouds are massing up there and they're big with child.
Head held high, you are standing and waiting for this, for the clouds to open, for you to be mother of change.
Rifles crack. The moorland holds its breath at a star shooting across it.
It would be good to sing and go with friends to face the firing squad, to dance, to float in the rain.
In the long sea-silence, a wave lifts, oars clip at the water.
A young fisherman bringing his boat to land, rice-growers trudging home, they shape their lips to your name.
Your name is beautiful for young girls born in July.
Big Book Of Poetry
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