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

One Hard Hive

from Inside the Apple
By Yehuda Amichai

I trust your voice
because it has lumps of hard pain in it
the way real honey
has lumps of wax from the honeycomb.

--Translated by Chana Bloch ~ Book

One Heaven-Pushed Bolt

A Translation from Petrarch (He is Jealous of the Heavens and the Earth) 

By J. M. Synge 

What a grudge I am bearing the earth that has its arms about her, and is holding that face away from me, where I was finding peace from great sadness. 

What a grudge I am bearing the Heavens that are after taking her, and shutting her in with greediness, the Heavens that do push their bolt against so many. 

What a grudge I am bearing the blessed saints that have got her sweet company, that I am always seeking; 

and what a grudge I am bearing against Death, that is standing in her two eyes, and will not call me with a word.

One Lasting Treegraft

what matters is that you shape with care
the clay on your humming potter's wheel (selah)
when the black plague then seeps in
it comes too late
a couple of centuries go by and the girls
will then enjoy the bright-colored bowl

 
....

what matters is that you graft the right slip
onto the right tree (selah)
if the executioners then knock on the door
they come too late
a few ice-ages pass and the youngsters will then savor your delicious apricots 

....

 --Hans Magnus Enzensberger, translated by Edouard Roditi

One Pained Caterpillar

from One of the Butterflies 

By W.S. Merwin

...it seems I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn into pain

One Trillion Particles

The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. 

 --TS Eliot

One High-Stakes Negotiation

Every great poet lives between two worlds. One of these is the real, tangible world of history, private for some and public for others. The other world is a dense layer of dreams, imagination, fantasms. It sometimes happens--as for example in the case of W.B. Yeats--that this second world takes on gigantic proportions, that it becomes inhabited by numerous spirits, that it is haunted by Leo Africanus and other ancient magi.

These two territories conduct complex negotiations, the result of which are poems. Poets strive for the first world, the real one, conscientiously trying to reach it, to reach the place where the minds of many people meet; but their efforts are hindered by the second world, just as the dreams and hallucinations of certain sick people prevent them from understanding and experiencing events in their waking hours. Except that in great poets these hindrances are rather a symptom of mental health, since the world is by nature dual, and poets pay tribute with their own duality to the structure of reality, which is composed of day and night, sober intelligence and fleeting fantasies, desire and gratification.

There is no poetry without this duality, though the second, substitute world is different for each outstanding creative artist.

--Adam Zagakewski, Introduction to The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert