One Far-Flying Arrow

from The Brimming Sea

By Ibn Arabi

Then the secret was there in my heart

and I was gone and my star set away

my heart by my lord's secret changed and I

absented from the body's feeling frame

wherefrom therewith I came

upon a ship of my high resolution

my fortress thoughts therein disposed

through a dark gulf of what I knew

unthought

and on my ship my longing blew

as winds, and so it passed

an arrow's passage through the sea

and across that sea Approach I cut

till I perceived unsecret what

was without name. You!

I said, by my heart seen!

I loose an arrow at your love

for you are dear to me

and you are my festivity

the end of all my passion and my prize.

--Translated by Robin Moger

One Abated Sun

from The Complaint

By Thomas Hoccleve

I see well, since I with sickness last

Was scourged, cloudy hath been the favour

That shone on me full bright in times past;

The sun abated, and the dark shower

Hilded down right on me, and in languor

Me made swim, so that my spirit

To live no lust had, ne no delight. 

....

For though that my wit were home come again, 

Men would it not so understand or take. 

With me to deal hadden they disdain: 

A riotous person I was and forsake. 

Mine old friendship was all overshake...

One Abandoned Bloom

I abandoned
my hometown
with cherry trees
in bloom

--Issa

One Unfound Seeker

Mauve blames me for saying, I’m an artist – which I won’t take back, because those words naturally imply always seeking without ever fully finding. It’s the exact opposite of saying, ‘I know it already, I’ve already found it’. To the best of my knowledge, those words mean ‘I seek, I pursue, my heart is in it’. 

--Vincent van Gogh, May 7, 1882

One Milky River

 She weaves and ends no pattern to day

                                Milky way girl

and the heavy ox pulls and pulls

to the end of the day no pattern

Via lactea clear and shallow

far from each other

                                one wide river to cross

--Anonymous Han dynasty poet, translated by Ezra Pound

One Steady-Tacking Ship

from Homeworld 

By Don Domanski

this is the growing of things     birthing of skin
and bone stem      and leaf      this is planet
earth beneath snowlight and desert sand
this is the place to find human beings walking down
the street with their souls drifting just ahead of them
with their faces half-lit by their own eyes

this is where you find the bodied and unbodied
living and the dead     also apple seeds and moonfish
swimming by      with heartbeats like fingernails
pinching and releasing flesh      their minds turning
in their sockets once every hour

                              ~

... where God and the absence of God are interchangeable
where the prayer on the lips and the claw in the pulse
send the same message to the stars.

                              ~  

in this world every life is a grubstake and a courtship
with affections foraging and fretting beneath the sun’s heat
with rootings of pain running down deep into soil
with sorrows immaculate and tacking steadily ahead
        every grief transfixed on a breath
        every teardrop tigering through a vein

One Molted Childhood

from Portrait of Me Incensing the Mushrooms Channeling Demeter

By Kizziah Burton

...
says the mother searching says the daughter wandering says the one watching
says the river that divides them says the bridge says the one following the one walking across
says the ancestor and the child says the first and the last says the ghost all the ghosts moving in circles
says the one swinging the torch in the realm of the dead
says the stalker hunting the stranger that hides the daughter behind his back
says the mother burying her life in quicksand like a dog buries a bone to come back for later
says the quicksand sucking down two lives says the hook in the daughter’s mouth
says the hand tenderly unhooking the lip releasing her body like a fish into the water
says the childhood she molts and abandons on the rock
....

One Effective Workout

The Famous Sisyphus
By Lars Emil Foder

The famous Sisyphus, who was sentenced by the gods
to forever roll a stone larger than himself up a mountain
again and again as punishment for trying to cheat death,
is by now in excellent shape: killer abs, giant biceps,
incredible thigh muscles, and a back that is a mountainous
landscape itself. You can follow him on Instagram.

~ Translated by Anne Kierkegaard

One Cast-Off Bandage

from The Pyramid Texts

Ancient Egypt

Collect thy bones; arrange thy limbs;
shake off thy dust; untie thy bandages.
The tomb is open for thee; the double doors of the coffin are undone for thee;
the double doors of heaven are open for thee.
....

...thy soul is in thy body; thy might is behind thee; remain master of thy powers.
Raise thyself up,
travel over the southern regions; travel over the northern regions;
be thou powerful over the powers that are in thee.

~ Translated by Samuel Mercer

One Appropriated Tear

from A poet, like a soldier 

By Nichita Stănescu 

A poet, like a soldier
has no life of his own.
His own life is wrecks
and ruins.

With the forceps of his cerebrum he lifts
the emotions of ants
brings them closer and closer to his eye
until they and his eye become one.
....

 
During waves of heat
he fans himself with flocks of birds
he startles into flight.

None of you should believe a poet when he cries.

His tear is never his own.
He has wiped tears from things
and cries things’ tears.


~ Translated by Sean Cotter | Book

One Lurking Locust

from Mars

By Alfred Gong

Mars took quarters in the city hall,

he was enthusiastic about towers

and above all, he appreciated card indexes. 

He collected ragpicker and bums,

and made them knight and adviser.

Hidden in a fold of his garment

the locust lurked.

 --Translated by Gertrude Schwebell

One Bird-Smeared Poem

My clumsy poem on the inn-wall none cared to see. 

With bird-droppings and moss's growth the letters were blotched away. 

There came a guest with heart so full, that though a page to the Throne, 

He did not grudge with his broidered coat to wipe off the dust, and read. 

 --Po Chü-i (Bai Juyi)

One Waxing Weapon

from Old English Rune Poem

xv (eolxh)

Elk-sedge is found     most often in a fen
it waxes in water      and wounds severely
burns in the blood     of each man’s body
who with his hand      takes hold of it

~ Anonymous, translated by Miller Oberman

One Frictioned Footing

I would often think how like a smooth slope any form of art is and of the amount of effort the artist must expend in order to keep from sliding back to where the footing is easier. 

~ Czeslaw Milosz

One Grass-Sewn Wound

from vesper 

By Iryna Shuvalova

...
in the end every wound is simply a ditch
a groove in the ground from which a long stubborn root has been torn
a burrow from which a fox has been smoked and chased endlessly through rainy fields
a rut carved by a helpless wheel in a sodden road

soon the wind the rain will come for it and the grass the grass
the birch goosefoot dog-grass burdock hemlock will sew the uneven edges together
the earth will lick its grazed memory
with its coarse green tongue

and so we too
forget to hate as we sleep
and simply grow like grass
covering the earth
with our clinging brittle
superfluous
love 

 ~ Translated by Uilleam Blacker | More

One Townslept Night

What the lover said

By Allur Nanmullaiyar

If one can tell morning
from noon from listless evening,
townslept night from dawn, then one's love
is a lie.

If I should lose her
I could proclaim my misery in the streets
riding mock-horses on palmyra-stems in my wildness:

but that seems such a shame.

But then,
living away from her,
living seems such a shame.  

--Translated A.K. Ramanujan ~ Book

One Translated Prayer

I prayed for relief from suffering; I received suffering.
Who can say my prayers were not heard? They were
Translated, edited--

…They were taken in, studied like ancient texts.
Perhaps they were ancient texts.

 --Louise Gluck

One Collapsed Wall

from Genesis 

By Romeo Oriogun 

Within the first light of my birth
I was named after a war.
My mother placed a pinch of sugar on my tongue
To sweeten every darkness I will walk through,
Then she rubbed hibiscus flower on my palms,
Which means son be tender even after the collapse of my walls.

....I have wished death on my shadow from behind the cover of bushes
& saw it die & still the earth keeps building

...

One Contrived Collision

Picasso....like the best poets, loved contriving collisions that forced new meanings to emerge. 

--Sebastian Smee

One Labyrinthine Dance

from The Crane Dance
By Yannis Ritsos

...at Delos they stopped,
Theseus and the young Athenians, and stepped
up to the altar of horns to dance a puzzle-
dance, its moves unreadable except to those who'd walked
the blank meanders of the labyrinth.
And this was midday: a fierce sun, the blaze
of their nakedness, the glitter of repetitions, a dazzle
rising off the sea, the scents of pine and hyacinth...

... Nowadays, we don't think much
about Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne on the beach
at Naxos, staring out at the coming years.
But people still dance that dance: just common folk,
those criss-cross steps that no one had to teach,
at weddings and wakes, in bars or parks,
as if hope and heart could meet, as if they might
even now, somehow, dance themselves out of the dark.

-- Translated by David Harsent ~ Book

One Blinding Ganglion

Looking for your light,
I went out:

it was like the sudden dawn
of a million million suns,

a ganglion of lightnings
for my wonder.

O Lord of Caves,
if you are light,
there can be no metaphor.

--Allama Prabhu, translated by A. K. Ramanujan