One Affirmative Negative

Of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar... the poet affirms nothing, and therefore never lies.

--Sir Philip Sidney

One Scentless Fruit

from Contemplating Hell
By Bertolt Brecht

...Also in Hell,
I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens
With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course,
Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great heaps of fruit, which nonetheless

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos,
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than
Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which
Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere.
And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty,
Even when inhabited. ...

--Translated by Robert Firmage

One Erased Kiss

A kiss on the forehead 
By Marina Tsvetaeva

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery.
I kiss your forehead.

A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness.
I kiss your eyes.

A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water.
I kiss your lips.

A kiss on the forehead—erases memory.


--Version by Jean Valentine and Ilya Kaminsky

One Bloodied Boomerang

from Threading
By Yehuda Amichai

...But the heart must kill one of us
on one of its forays,
if not you — me,
when it comes back empty-handed,
like Cain, a boomerang from the field.

--Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

One Thin Needle

from Threading
By Yehuda Amichai

Loving each other began this way: threading
loneliness into loneliness
patiently, our hands trembling and precise.

--Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

One Bare Finger

Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
By A.E. Stallings

Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.

She turns her moon-cold shoulder
And tosses off the cover.
You cannot hope to hold her:
She has another lover.

She tosses off the cover
And lays the darkness bare.
She has another lover.
Her heart is otherwhere.

She lays the darkness bare.
You slowly realize
Her heart is otherwhere.
There's distance in her eyes.

You slowly realize
That she will never linger,
With distance in her eyes
And no ring on her finger.

One Bankrupting Kiss

I would love to kiss you.
 The price of kissing is your life. 
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
 What a bargain, let's buy it. 

 --Jelaluddin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

One Soaked Spirit

Poets, though,
differ in combustibility.
Those soaked in spirits
catch fire first.

--Miroslav Holub, translated by David Young and Dana Habova

One Misleading Spine

Had we known the Ton she bore
We had helped the terror—
But she straighter walked for Freight
So be hers the error—

--Emily Dickinson

One Fiery Flower

from To the Tune 'Soaring Clouds'
By Huang O

...All night the bee
Clung trembling to the flower
Stamens. Oh my sweet perfumed
Jewel! I will allow only
My lord to possess my sacred
Lotus pond, and every night
You can make blossom in me
Flowers of fire.

--Translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung

One Staring Dial

from Elegy of Fortinbras
By Zbigniew Herbert

...you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock's dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy...

--Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

Two Opposing Moons

from The Neglected Wife
By Yi Talch'ung

...Soon came the whisper of a silken skirt.
Soon came the perfume of a jasmine flower.
Swiftly for you there rose another moon.

....I think you do not know how cruel you are,
But why was your parting gift to me
Another folding fan?

---Translated by Joan Grigsby

One Empty Lot

from Love is finished again
By Yehuda Amichai

...
Love is finished again. When a tall building
is torn down and the debris cleared away, you stand there
on the square empty lot, saying: What a small
space that building stood on
with all its many floors and people.
...

--Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

One Sleepy Husband

A War-Torn Wife 
By Chenjerai Hove

This war!
I am tired of a husband
 who never sleeps
guarding the home or on call-up,
never sleeping!

Maybe inside himself he says
"I am tired of a wife
   who never dies
so I can stop guarding."

One Trembling Dog

The Promise
By Jane Hirshfield

Stay, I said
to the cut flowers.
They bowed
their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,
who fled.

Stay, leaf.
It reddened,
embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth
of riverine valley meadows,
of fossiled escarpments,
of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back
with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answered,
Always.

One Incinerated Woman

from Don't Go, Don't Go
By Mirabai

 ...I would like my own body to turn into a heap of incense and sandalwood and you set a torch to it.
When I've fallen down to gray ashes, smear me on your shoulders and chest. ...

 --Version by Robert Bly

One Forgiven Lot

from A Dialogue of Self and Soul
By W.B. Yeats

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

Two Tattered Stockings

from The Light-Gray Soil
By Gjertrud Schnackenberg

...O beggar, I have seen the mound of earth
When all the rivers call their fountains back.
I wore my shoes away, I wore away
The stockings from my feet, seeking the house
Where no beloved person ever died,
No father, mother, husband, wife, or child.
Earth's crust diminishing beneath my feet.
The mantle glimpsed. The churning, iron core.
My hand lies next to me, begging, unheld:
Another earth. Give me another earth.

More

One Poetic Year

The present year has been, in some respects, the most awful nightmare of anxiety that the mind of man could conceive, but at least it is not dull. --T.S. Eliot

One True Lie

...poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true...

 --William Faulkner