Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Indecisiveness

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

When you encounter something beautiful,

Even if you are not familiar with beauty,

Be willing to approach it,

Rather than hesitating and distancing yourself.



When something good is in front of you,

Even if it feels unfamiliar,

Show an interest,

Instead of being overly critical and parting ways.



When you encounter something true,

Even if you usually don't care much about it,

In the realm of human existence, truth is necessary.

Knowing that truth ultimately stays with us,

Accept it, instead of discarding it like an old rag.



Unacceptance, leads to inevitable collisions,

And regrets -- both big and small.

You end up being tossed around and remain indecisive at every turn.

Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Categories
Poetry

The Life of a Leaf

By Ron Pickett

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
A leaf settles slowly to the ground.
It flutters and weaves in its fall.
It lands and rolls over and over,
It stops behind a small rock.
Its productive life seems to have ended.

In March, it began as a yellow-green bump.
A bump on a limb, high up on a tree. 
Then, May, and June, July and August 
Those were the productive months,
Oozing sugars and other nutrients.
Removing CO2 -- exhaling Oxygen.
Doing leaf things.

Then, the colour changes back to yellow, then brown.
Its grip on the limb weakens and it slowly falls.
Now, on the ground, a new existence begins.
Its productivity is not over.
It nestles with other leaves.
Narrow, broad, round.
Turning brown and crisp, fragile.
A walker shuffles through the leaves,
They mix and disintegrate.
Pine needles add to the pile.
A bicycle rolls through the leaves.
Leaves are broken and chipped.
The pile changes as pieces are smaller and smaller.
No longer leaves.

Then dust; mixed remains from a thousand leaves.
The dry, cool air breaks down the leaves.
Matter that once produced food for the tree.
Now seemingly useless and discarded.
Then the rains come, the dust slowly dissolves,
It seeps into the ground enriches the soil.
Roots pull the material in, 
It moves up the tree.
It nourishes the spring growth, 
Buds form on the branches.
Yellow-green bumps.
Bumps that will become leaves.
Leaves that will give life to the tree.
Leaves that will fall.
Leaves that will turn brown, turn to dust, be dissolved by the rains.
Taken up by the roots and nourish the tree,
Emerging bumps that will become leaves.
And it repeats, and repeats, and repeats forever.

Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Patricia Walsh

Patricia Walsh
PAINT STRIPPER

This corrosion, for better bearing, ended,
stench of solvent above the flower box
flavours distended, unwatered, to demise.

I once feared being pounced on,.
people doing other than eating. 
Minding their business, chatting to content.

Esoteric art hangs on the wall.
Selling for an orchestra, singing well,
enjoying the radio mumbling overhead.

Looking out on the cycle path, saying prayers
against the river's deluge, a fractured coursing
still only in one direction, catching fire.

The sun dances on various monuments,
sinking drinks al fresco, eating ad nauseum,
memoirs of the stony dead staying regardless.

Sweet wild flowers inhabit the tables,
scent bred out for better bearing
allergens eaten to hold for dear life.

A portmanteau life, an ersatz existence,
eat and somehow leave, bereft of information
imparted, sightseeing for dear life.

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland.  To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals across Ireland, The UK, USA, and Canada.  She has also published another novel, In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.

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Categories
Poetry

Flowing Rivers

By Thoyyib Mohammad

FLOWING RIVERS 

My eyes are flowing rivers,
Abundant, turbulent rivers.
They flowed in all directions
To nourish withered roots. 
They pour at all times
To endure shivering twigs.
Autumn passes, winter nears.
Oak trees whisper, secrets cross.
Still, the river flows from my eyes,
Yet, the tears fail to bloom flowers.
Time passes, frozen hearts,
Faded memory that yearn tears,
Tears strive to roots in their roots,
Roots draw the darkened shadows,
Shadows show arid rivers,
Arid rivers chant dreadful dreams,
Yet, the river is flowing!

Thoyyib Mohammad has been published several poems and short stories in English and Malayalam. His work mostly addressed human emotions, existence, and philosophical aspects. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at IIM Kashipur.

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Stuart McFarlane

Written on 8th July 2021

JOE  
                                                                                                                     I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know.

They took him away in the night.
He won’t get any worse – but he might.
All you can do is hope and pray,
for miracles do happen, they say.
But you know Joe, he never did God,
always found it all a bit odd.
‘So who made the virus?’ he’d sometimes ask. 
You can’t see God’s face. He’s wearing a mask.
He’s not said a word since the ICU.
They said they’d let me know of anything new.
So here I sit; I sit by the phone.
I wait for the call he’s on his way home.
I wait; I watch the clock on the wall.
I watch the light die; and darkness fall.
                  
I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know.
  


THOUGHTS ON CORONAVIRUS 

Bacteria, they say, are alive.                                                                                              Coronavirus, they say, is alive                                                                                                                       and, yet, not alive.                                                                                                                                    Its only purpose on this Earth                                                                                                                      is to replicate itself as fast                                                                                                                      as it can.                                                                                                                                                    It’s so small it almost isn’t there.                                                                                                           And, yet, it’s there. It’s everywhere.                                                                                                                It’s very minuteness is it’s strength.                                                                                                                       It manifests a fierce impulse                                                                                                                       to survive.                                                                                                                                                      And to survive, it kills. 
Yet it doesn’t know it kills.                                                                                                                                    It doesn’t know, it doesn’t know.                                                                                                         It doesn’t know, it doesn’t know,                                                                                                                      it doesn’t know.                                                                                                                            Deep down, deep inside our body cells,                                                                                        it wages sub-atomic warfare;                                                                                                                          it’s murderous motivation unfathomable.                                                                                                 A million more – it doesn’t care.                                                                                                                       It doesn’t care, it doesn’t care.                                                                                                                        It doesn’t care, it doesn’t care,                                                                                                                                   it doesn’t care.

Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.                                                                                                                    

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Categories
Poetry

The White-Coloured Book

Poem by Quazi Johirul Islam, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam

Perhaps you never ever noticed me
Reading this book day after day,
Or seen me looking from cover to cover
For other books in it, single-mindedly.

Tick tock the body clock kept beating.
Day would end and evening descend,
Time after time to the old page I’d return,
And yet I could never ever finish reading;

I had dipped in a river with no water at all,
I’d keep going down and down and still feel
I’d lost all sense of where I was—east or west;
This drying river would swallow me up whole!

A little later, all traces of the evening will disappear.
A shock will paralyse this desert-like land,
But the book will get stuck in the midst of the sand,
Perhaps, only for someone to lift it with his hand!

If you manage to take the book up in your hand,
No letter of the alphabet anywhere in it you’d see,
For this book full of white pages you took from the sand
Was the favourite reading matter of poet Jalal Uddin Rumi!

Quazi Johirul Islam has been writing for over 3 decades. He has published more than 90 books, 39 of them are collections of poetry. His travelogues are very popular. He has been with United Nations, has traveled all over the world, worked in conflict zones, his bag is full of colourful experiences. In 2023, Quazi was awarded Peace Run Torch Bearer Award by Sri Chinmoy Centre, New York. He has also received many awards and honours in Bangladesh, India and abroad.

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Categories
Poetry

Solace in a Café

By Padmanabha Reddy

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.*
 
So, you again want to walk
In these streets of powdered chalk,
Where nothing more than old trees
With ripened fruits lie in the winter freeze?
 
Do I know... Do I know
What lies here below the snow?
 
There is still time for the yellow walls,
The office shawls, and the colourful balls,
To close for the day and open tomorrow
When the lights come back from sorrow.
 
There are people on these tables
Beside the stables and mighty fables
Watching us through the crooked panes;
Let us walk away before they come again.
 
Do I know... Do I know
What lies here below the snow?
 
The legs, the hands, the mouth
The nose, the crimson rose,
The sound of lightning bows,
Everything's a dream, I suppose.
Perhaps I'd been better at home
Taking to my hair with that wooden comb.
 
I am done now... Sitting at the balcony
Watching the stars and people in myriad bars.
I'm not Diomedes or Odysseus,
Or Apollo stopping the charge of bows.
I'm Dolan, sitting on this table,
Amidst the foul winds, and living in a fable.
 
Do I know... Do I know
What lies here below the snow?
 
Perhaps I am better with this spoon
Whirling, Twirling, and Swirling the coffee
Till the last cube of life leaves me.
 
Do you still want to walk
In these streets of powdered chalk,
Where nothing more than old trees
With ripened fruits lie in the winter freeze?
 
Let us go then walking, talking
About Dolan, and not Odysseus,
About Hector, and not Achilles,
About me, and not you,
Before he comes by and kills us.
 
* ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ by WB Yeats (1865 – 1939)

Padmanabha Reddy is a postgraduate student of English at Delhi University. He has a self-published novel, titled I Heard an Owl Scream. that has been felicitated by the Department of Language and Culture, Government of Telangana.

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Categories
Poetry

A Dream

By Kumar Bhatt

A DREAM

'How are
Your In-laws, Husband,
Parents, Children, Home and You? '
He asked in a cascade.

If he had
Put me first in the list,
I would have forgotten myself
When he came to the end
Of his long inquiry
That drills into my life.

I hardly know him,
Going by the number of words
Exchanged between us.
He is not close enough to me to ask me anything more than,
'How are you? '

Everyone has parents.
But he just assumes
That I have in-laws,
a husband, children and home!

He has a weakness
for assuming.

He was a stranger
But he felt intimate.
And I told him about
My dream.
It was a modest dream,
Almost trivial as dreams go,
But precious to me
Nonetheless.

Most dreams
Are like bubbles.
They burst
After floating for a while.
Only a few
Are like drops of rain
That make it to the ground
On the sands in a desert.

I assume
He wanted to ask me
About my dream.

If he had
The courage to ask,
I would have told him,
My dream was
Like that drop of rain.

Kumar Bhatt  is a retired professor of Physics interested in everything in general. After retirement in 2002, he has been trying to learn to write. He lives in Ahmedabad.

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Categories
Poetry

Grief

By Hamza Azhar

I seek refuge from the grief of your memory,
But Grief replies,
‘Hear me and rejoice.’

I run from the longing 
To erase your name, 
But it holds me all the same.

Hence, I write a poem to send you.
But by self-inflicted fate,
I am a hundred and seven days too late.

You will receive my poem when I am far away.
And I will think to myself,
Somewhere in the heatstroke of summer,
Amidst the crowds of people you know,
You must remember me.
Somewhere along the lonely nights,
Amidst the memories you wish to relive,
You must be taking my name.

Hamza Azhar is a student of Public Administration, and an aspiring poet who writes on themes of grief, friendship, betrayal and unidentified longing. Find him on Instagram @_hamza.azhar

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Categories
Poetry

A Migrant’s Story

Poetry by Jee Leong Koh

THE CERAMICIST 

For Hong-Ling Wee (arr. 1992)

On a NASA scholarship to map the world,
she walked into a workshop on a whim
to throw a lump of clay on a wheel and feel 
a foggy, quiet, pink, revolving world
evolve into an object of the mind
under the body’s pressure, slight and sure,
and, afterwards, surrender to the fire,
not that of fire, but that of accident,
for a ceramic rocket fallen back
to earth. And this she did, for many years,
living on little, explaining less, until
she was surrounded by the fuselage.
When the towers gashed vermilion and buckled, 
she was alone at home in Union Square.
The noise expanded as it dribbled off
to meet its echo, second detonation
worse than the first report, in summoning
half-buried images of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. In a foreign mood,
she heard the phone ring and a female voice,
acclimatised but recognisable
as Singaporean, asked for Wee Hong Ling.
She never tires of telling this story, how
the Consulate located her and every
Singaporean within an hour of disaster,
when a black hole opened but was avoided
because a star had called, a star called home.
She never tires of telling this story, which
I now tell you in my own fanciful way,
each iteration also explanation,
the how developing into the why,
why her pitchers, bowls, vases levitate.

(First published in the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore and collected in Sample and Loop: A Simple History of Singaporeans in America, Bench Press, 2023)

Jee Leong Koh is a Singaporean writer, editor, and publisher living in New York City. His hybrid work Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet won the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. His book of poems Steep Tea (Carcanet) was named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times in the UK and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the US. Other honours include being shortlisted twice for the Singapore Literature Prize in English poetry for The Pillow Book and Connor & Seal.

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