Introduction

Welcome to "poems from around the world" where I aim to read and share poems from every country in the world.

My name is Mack, main blog is @salvadorbonaparte and I'm a translation student.

My plan is to post a daily poem together with its author, country of origin, translator, and language of origin (if applicable or known). The poems will be posted in English because of word count considerations. However, I invite all readers to reblog poems with their originals, alternative translations or translations in other languages.

To suggest a poem you can send me an ask or full out the form below. I also regularly try to read and research global poetry.

People are very welcome to suggest poems translated from minority languages and poems that challenge the concepts of countries, nations, and states. This project not only aims to share poems from around the world but point out how difficult it is to categorise poems and poets into imagined communities like nations.

On the Other Side of the Poem - Rachel Korn - Poland/Canada

Translator: Seymour Levitan (Yiddish)

On the other side of the poem there is an orchard,

and in the orchard, a house with a roof of straw,

and three pine trees,

three watchmen who never speak, standing guard.

On the other side of the poem there is a bird,

yellow brown with a red breast,

and every winter he returns

and hangs like a bud in the naked bush.

On the other side of the poem there is a path

as thin as a hairline cut,

and someone lost in time

is treading the path barefoot, without a sound.

On the other side of the poem amazing things may happen,

even on this overcast day,

this wounded hour

that breathes its fevered longing in the windowpane.

On the other side of the poem my mother may appear

and stand in the doorway for a while lost in thought

and then call me home as she used to call me home long ago:

Enough play, Rokhl. Don’t you see it’s night?

The Un-God - Latha - Sri Lanka

Translator: Shash Trevett (Tamil)

First I made the pottu

Then I planted

Tumeric and pale-scented

Jasmine on the vine

Raw-green tumeric-yellow sky-blue violet-

Inked butterflies fluttered

And fluttered

Everywhere in the house

Filling it with their music

Every moment 

Around you

As I grew around you

You said

Not all lives 

Are conceived 

To walk the earth

Yes

You will never become

A god

They’re saying in the village

Come to me softly - Xasan Ganey - Somalia

Translator: Ibrahim Hirsi (Somali)

Her:

You, the bloomed Qaydar tree,

drenched by a rain,

leaves a fragrant wind which shakes,

You, my qudhac flowers

You are the one

I’ve chosen,

The one I desire.

You who my soul follows

You will soon be refreshed

So come to me slowly.

Him:

You who are sweet like

the mareer fruit

That grows with beauty

And fragrant like the Qawl

You who cool

My smouldering heart

Covered in wounds

You the precious one

You will soon be refreshed

So come to me slowly

Her:

You who are like

the rain overflowing

the channels

In a lush green

You, who are a vessel full of ghee

Of which I’ve taken my share —

You, my strong ram.

You who my soul follows

You will be refreshed

So come to me slowly.

Him:

You who are

a rainbow,

sashes of colours,

And the freshly-fallen rain

You who are spring’s greenery,

With new shoots for grazing

And on places to camp.

You, the precious one.

You will be refreshed

So come to me slowly.

Travellers - Conceição Lima - São Tomé and Príncipe

Translator: Stefan Tobler (Portuguese)

They bore sunsets and roads

Thirst for the horizon called them

- Who do you belong to?

Who are your people?

That's how our grandmother held out

A mug of water to the traveller

Three Contemporary Truths - Conceição Lima - São Tomé and Príncipe

Translator: Stefan Tobler

I believe in the invisible

I believe in the levitation of witches

I believe in vampires

Because they are

Valentine's Day - Shen Haobo - China

Translator: Dave Haysom (Chinese)

First love dead already.

​Didn’t burn ghost money.

-February 14th 2017

Irony - Reza Mohammadi - Afghanistan

Translator: Hamid Kabir, Nick Laird (Dari)

You put artificial flowers in a silver-looking vase

beside a painting of a window,

and the sun revealed your smile as fake,

so you rested the mask of your beautiful face

on my chest - but hey, I love you, it's true,

and I love you with all of my heart.

from Coyote's Love Poems for Roadrunner - Osvaldo Bossi - Argentina

Translator: Jon Herring (Spanish)

IV

I dream of Roadrunner all the time

and in the mornings

it’s the beep-beep of the alarm clock

that reminds me of him.

With my bulging eyes

and body braced

for the endless descent into the void

I reclaim my name: Hunter.

V

All I ask is for

The chance to speak to him.

For him to let me explain

how strong this love is.

Just one moment for me.

And when he says beep-beep

to feel he’s not mocking me.

VI

Tomorrow is a big

birthday for me.

My only wish is to wake up

to find I’m the Roadrunner.

I want to see me

like he does.

IX

My friend Pablo

phoned me up.

He already knows

about my dark obsession

and he disapproves.

He brought me a photo album

of beautiful naked coyotées

which I leafed through politely,

feigning interest.

It made him feel better

and let me practise hiding this strange fascination,

this descent

into the impossible.

Before, I was called something different - Osvaldo Bossi - Argentina

Translator: Jon Herring (Spanish)

Before

I was called something different

until finally I met you

and you called me by my real name.

Then I turned

as if your voice had cast away

a veil, an invisible stone, unbearable,

behind which continued

my actual life, which I’d hardly been

aware of.

That was, I’m certain

my one, dazzling

baptism by fire

and there was nobody around but us.

I remember it perfectly:

fresh from the shower

you opened your eyes and looked at me

like someone finding a hieroglyph

behind a wall

and you told me

– From now on, I’m going to call you Leo.

Leo, you told me

as if God

who can be so understanding sometimes

had whispered my real name

in your ear,

the one that no one – not even I –

had managed to find, and in so doing

he’d simply said to you

– Rafita, listen up, call him Leo

but not like Leopardi

more like Leonardo Di Caprio.

Yeah; stop laughing.

That’s the name, so lovely and absurd

that his heart directly answers to.

Ode to Joy - Pavol Janík - Slovakia

Translator: James Sutherland-Smith (Slovak)

Where are those old poems? What were they actually about? And who gave a tinker’s about them.

Somewhere in us something from them has remained, a charge timed in Nuremburg, a Frankfurt porn cinema, a coca-cola opposite the Moulin Rouge, Lenin inside a Marseille shop window, a faded postcard of the Cote d’Azur, documents stolen in Rome, undeveloped photos of the leaning tower of Pisa, a night in Florence, Bolognese poofs, pigeons at six in the morning on Saint Mark’s Square, an over made-up customs girl on the train from Vienna to Devinska Nova Ves.

Where are those old poems? Now nobody will write them any more. They never made sense to anybody.

They’ve suddenly switched off the power in Europe. A darkness has started, that which existed before the invention of light. We walk on the ceiling of our flat from memory. Children laugh at us in their sleep.

At the entrance to nowhere they’ll return us the entrance fee to life, which was worth it even though not so much.

Only for death you don’t pay.

The Star-Bright Hour - Betti Alver - Estonia

Translator: Unknown (Estonian)

The wind won’t ask: to what did life amount? To yourself you’ll render your own account.

However long, however dark the night – your forehead bears your name in plain sight.

Each leaf that sees the sunlight falls unknown with all the rest. Yet each one falls alone.

No shining goal, no star to travel toward? Go and see what is consumerism’s reward.

Do you know how kindness grows, unseen and gentle? Why cruel deeds are never accidental? Why helmets rust unless they bloom and flower? Why life can never repeat its star-bright hour? Why tiny flames withstood the snowstorm’s test and flickered on within the human breast?

Go ask your betters, do their bidding. Go ask the dead. And then go ask the living.

But never ask yesterday for those who happened to stray across the sandy marsh into pitch-black night.

It’s all the same to them – was it spite that made the boatman take his chance without a light, or was it happenstance?

A Mechanical Angel - Henrikas Radauskas - Lithuania

Translator: Jonas Zdanys (Lithuanian)

A mechanical angel's duties are not difficult:

Govern lightning bolts, bring bread and wine,

Watch through the window how flames climb the walls,

Talk with street lamps about old times.

A mechanical angel's duties are not difficult:

Feed chimeras in the tower every hundred years,

Step softly so the metal will not clang,

Cloak freezing caryatids with fog.

A mechanical angel's duties are difficult:

Blocade the door, do not let Death in,

And if she enters, show her a sleeping brother

And convince her he doesn't have a soul.

Shadows Pass Us By - Nikola Madzirov - North Macedonia

Translator: Magdalena Horvat (Macedonian)

We’ll meet one day,

like a paper boat and

a watermelon that’s been cooling in the river.

The anxiety of the world will

be with us. Our palms

will eclipse the sun and we’ll

approach each other holding lanterns.

One day, the wind won’t

change direction.

The birch will send away leaves

into our shoes on the doorstep.

The wolves will come after

our innocence.

The butterflies will leave

their dust on our cheeks.

An old woman will tell stories

about us in the waiting room every morning.

Even what I’m saying has

been said already: we’re waiting for the wind

like two flags on a border.

One day every shadow

                                 will pass us by. 

The Old Town of Plovdiv - Ivan Theofilov - Bulgaria

Translator: Zdravka Mihaylova (Bulgarian)

Your ancient floors float among the stars.

Blue donkeys graze the silence around.

The Roman road leads down along matrimonial

chandeliers.

A cry out of woman's flesh calls in the clock.

Violet-colored philistines go to bed in the deep

houses,

they hear the pig, the hens, the train, the mouse.

The darkness dawns with quick sensual pupils.

The bridal veil flies away with the chimney's breath.

Blue donkeys run on the moonlit roofs.

Saints take off in a cloud from whitewashed churches,

with blood-soaked lambs they welcome the bridal veil.

Leopards gaze with amber eyes from the doorsteps.

Among box trees bacchantes with satin bands

pour fragrant myrrh out of bronze rhytons ...

A Guest Came to Visit - Yankev Flapan - Poland/Argentina

Translator: Claire Breger-Belsky (Yiddish)

I whitewashed the walls of my heart, covered the floor with damp yellow sand, and for a while my small bright wife kissed my eyes. Then I opened the door of my heart wide, sat myself down on the fresh-washed stoop, detached the bell— and waited for the guest, long yearned-for.

The road to my heart glowed with happiness when it felt the lightest step of young bronze— my guest, molded by cities on the Don, in other cities a lantern lighter, and now with me, a tender roommate forever.

Sit, beloved friend, says my wife, and offers him the white chair of my mood. We sit by my heart’s open door and for a while, wordless with damp eyes hold silent conversation …

Your Hands - Angelika Weld Grimke - USA

I love your hands: They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands; Hair grows on the back near the wrist I have seen the nails broken and stained From hard work. And yet, when you touch me, I grow small . . . . . . and quiet . . . . . . . . . . . . . And happy . . . . . . If I might only grow small enough To curl up into the hollow of your palm, Your left palm, Curl up, lie close and cling, So that I might know myself always there, . . . . . . Even if you forgot.