Orlando Furioso Canto 3 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Restored to sense, the beauteous Bradamant Finds sage Melissa in the vaulted tomb, And hears from her of many a famous plant And warrior, who shall issue from her womb. Next, to release Rogero from the haunt Of old Atlantes, learns how from the groom, Brunello hight, his virtuous ring to take; And thus […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 24 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Odorico’s and Gabrina’s guilt repaid, Youthful Zerbino sets at large the train; He in defence of good Orlando’s blade, Is afterwards by Mandricardo slain. Isabel weeps; by Rodomont is made War on the Tartar king, and truce again, To succour Agramant and his array; Who to the lilies are well-nigh a prey. I Let […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 19 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Medoro, by Angelica’s quaint hand, Is healed, and weds, and bears her to Catay. At length Marphisa, with the chosen band, After long suffering, makes Laiazzi’s bay. Guido the savage, bondsman in the land, Which impious women rule with civil sway, With Marphisa strives in single fight, And lodges her and hers at full […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 18 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Gryphon is venged. Sir Mandricardo goes In search of Argier’s king. Charles wins the fight. Marphisa Norandino’s men o’erthrows. Due pains Martano’s cowardice requite. A favouring wind Marphisa’s gallery blows, For France with Gryphon bound and many a knight. The field Medoro and Cloridano tread, And find their monarch Dardinello dead. I High minded […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 17 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Charles goes, with his, against King Rodomont. Gryphon in Norandino’s tournament Does mighty deeds; Martano turns his front, Showing how recreant is his natural bent; And next, on Gryphon to bring down affront, Stole from the knight the arms in which he went; Hence by the kindly monarch much esteemed, And Gryphon scorned, whom […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 14 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Two squadrons lack of those which muster under King Agramant, by single Roland slain; Hence furious Mandricardo, full of wonder And envy, seeks the count by hill and plain: Next joys himself with Doralice; such plunder, Aided by heaven, his valiant arms obtain. Rinaldo comes, with the angel-guide before, To Paris, now assaulted by […]
Orlando Furioso canto 13 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT The Count Orlando of the damsel bland Who loves Zerbino, hears the piteous woes. Next puts to death the felons with his hand Who pent her there. Duke Aymon’s daughter goes, Seeking Rogero, where so large a band The old Atlantes’ magic walls enclose. Her he impounds, deceived by fictions new. Agramant ranks his […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 12 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Orlando, full of rage, pursues a knight Who bears by force his lady-love away, And comes where old Atlantes, by his sleight Had raised a dome, Rogero there to stay. Here too Rogero comes; where getting sight Of his lost love, the County strives in fray With fierce Ferrau, and, after slaughter fell Amid […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 10 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Another love assails Bireno’s breast, Who leaves one night Olympia on the shore. To Logistilla’s holy realm addressed, Rogero goes, nor heeds Alcina more: Him, of that flying courser repossest, The hippogryph on airy voyage bore: Whence he the good Rinaldo’s levy sees, And next Angelica beholds and frees. I Of all the loves, […]
Here I would have loved you by Luz del Alba Nicola
Here I would have loved you by Luz del Alba Nicola On sands evening slips And silver wings paint a sapphire sky. Anchored in the spring of love, memories Taste as salt and show its eaten edges. Here and another now You were the song of the sea sung by the shells And the wind […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 19 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Medoro, by Angelica’s quaint hand, Is healed, and weds, and bears her to Catay. At length Marphisa, with the chosen band, After long suffering, makes Laiazzi’s bay. Guido the savage, bondsman in the land, Which impious women rule with civil sway, With Marphisa strives in single fight, And lodges her and hers at full […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 18 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Gryphon is venged. Sir Mandricardo goes In search of Argier’s king. Charles wins the fight. Marphisa Norandino’s men o’erthrows. Due pains Martano’s cowardice requite. A favouring wind Marphisa’s gallery blows, For France with Gryphon bound and many a knight. The field Medoro and Cloridano tread, And find their monarch Dardinello dead. I High minded […]
I Just Wanna Be Your Valentine by Miraj Patel
I just wanna be your valentine, just wanna be your valentine, Come with where just you and i, And its the feeling now i just can’t hide… Girl you the only one which not others could, You the only one, i just wanna be your valentine…. Till the day drops down i will be your […]
Entering the Body by Michelle Bonczek Evory
Entering the Body by Michelle Bonczek Evory Entering the Body after Gunter von Hagen’s Body Worlds All I could think of at first was cooking. Of that skinned rabbit in my freezer, fur torn, gaze jammed between a package of phyllo and a carton of ice cream. Of all that succulent meat dripping from its […]
Travel to Infinite Places by Michael Levy
Music drifts through a thousand minds, Through doors, windows, walls. Serenades sail tranquil waters, Ebb in one ear, flow out the next, Ever onward, navigating infinity, Lovers touch, sending electric messages beyond space and time, Turquoise crystal thoughts blow freely, Across oceans, mountains, plains, Visions of extreme delights fly faster than light, Beaming sensitivity beyond […]
The Passing of Stumpy Shore by Mervyn John Webster
The Passing of Stumpy Shore by Mervyn John Webster The Constable had found the man ’round five on Friday morn; Apparently while on his shift from midnight through ’till dawn. Two youths, with blood stains on their clothes, detained drunk in the park, Disclosed they’d rolled some homeless bloke, sometime just after dark. Now Sergeant […]
I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell
I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes, and the prospect of a string bass inside the wood, I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision. As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos topped […]
I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell
I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes, and the prospect of a string bass inside the wood, I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision. As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos topped […]
Coming To This by Mark Strand
We have done what we wanted. We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry of each other, and we have welcomed grief and called ruin the impossible habit to break. And now we are here. The dinner is ready and we cannot eat. The meat sits in the white lake of its dish. The wine […]
To Be of Use by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy […]
The Steeple-Jack by Marianne Moore
Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish. One by one in two’s and three’s, the seagulls […]
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker
The Boy by Marilyn Hacker It is the boy in me who’s looking out the window, while someone across the street mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette? (Because he flinched, because he didn’t whirl around, face them, because he didn’t hurl the challenge back—”Fascists?”—not “Faggots”—Swine! he […]
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them’s the shadow of a breast with a lost object’s half-life, with as much life as an anecdotal photograph: me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, hiking near […]
My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy
1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. […]
Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
Purple as tulips in May, mauve into lush velvet, purple as the stain blackberries leave on the lips, on the hands, the purple of ripe grapes sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, like a new flower in a bud vase on your desk. Every day I will paint […]
They Would Love To See Me Dead by Mahmoud Darwish
They would love to see me dead, so they say: He belongs to us, he is ours. For twenty years I have heard their footsteps on the walls of the night. They open no door, yet here they are now. I see three of them: A poet, a killer, and a reader of books. Will […]
State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish
Here, where the hills slope before the sunset and the chasm of time near gardens whose shades have been cast aside we do what prisoners do we do what the jobless do we sow hope In a land where the dawn sears we have become more doltish and we stare at the moments of victory […]
Rita And The Rifle by Mahmoud Darwish
Between Rita and my eyes There is a rifle And whoever knows Rita Kneels and plays To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes And I kissed Rita When she was young And I remember how she approached And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids And I remember Rita The way a sparrow remembers […]
For My People by Margaret Walker
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe […]
Godo Is Not Coming by Ndue Ukaj
Godo Is Not Coming By Ndue Ukaj It is raining, the road from Ireland is unpassable The sea cannot be passed with small steps, on rainy nights When solitude is overwhelming you enjoy the earthquake cracks of the Earth When pain has no time even for scientific explanation. Godo is not coming, it is late, […]
To Imagination by Nithin Purple
I swim Unto high waves of imagination,So seriousness blends with inspiring wine;Drink of silence made infusion,That mind grows soft then thick and aflame.Its yard is adorned with hope full merry;Ward of profound, born new sublime,A seduced aggression is it being imaginary;That wakes me from seven seas of prime. End of the poem 15 random poems […]
The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly sarcastic) Jesus by Oliver St. John Gogarty
I’m the queerest young fellow that ever was heard. My mother’s a Jew; my father’s a Bird With Joseph the Joiner I cannot agree So ‘Here’s to Disciples and Calvary.’ If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine, He gets no free drinks when I’m making the wine But have to drink water and wish it […]
Mother’s Love by Nin Andrews
On the island where I grew up, the cooks were the most revered members of society, admired alongside the priests, the painters, the architects of the governor’s mansion. Cooking, it was said, was a rare form of magic, transmitted from angels to women on earth. That is why my mother, a chef in her own […]
I was born with a cry by Nur Al-Alam
I was born with a cry by Nur Al-Alam O my Beloved! I was born with a cry. Didn’t know why? Perhaps, for separation from heaven above, Or maybe, for safety, protection and love. But before knowing where I was landed, What was I signed-up for, Even before a tear was dropped, Blessed was I, […]
How…? by Nizar Sartawi
How did you droop like a captain horrified by a storm when in your horizons flocks of white clouds passed tickling the eyelids of the sun, and close to your vacant eyes ecstatic daffodil tresses went swaying in rapture at the edges of the stream sipping wine from the golden horizon and pouring drunken ghosts […]
Noon by Philip Levine
Noon by Philip Levine I bend to the ground to catch something whispered, urgent, drifting across the ditches. The heaviness of flies stuttering in orbit, dirt ripening, the sweat of eggs. There are small streams the width ofa thumb running in the villages of sheaves, whole eras of grain wakening on the stalks, a roof […]
House Of Silence by Philip Levine
House Of Silence by Philip Levine The winter sun, golden and tired, settles on the irregular army of bottles. Outside the trucks jostle toward the open road, outside it’s Saturday afternoon, and young women in black pass by arm in arm. This bar is the house of silence, and we drink to silence without raising […]
Isaiah LXIII by Phillis Wheatley
Say, heav’nly muse, what king or mighty God, That moves sublime from Idumea’s road? In Bosrah’s dies, with martial glories join’d, His purple vesture waves upon the wind. Why thus enrob’d delights he to appear In the dread image of the Pow’r of war? Compres’d in wrath the swelling wine-press groan’d, It bled, and pour’d […]
The Café Filtre by Paul Blackburn
Slowly and with persistence he eats away at the big steak, gobbles up the asparagus, its butter & salt & root taste, drinks at a glass of red wine, and carefully taking his time, mops up the gravy with bread— The top of the café filtre is copper, passively shines back, & between mouthfuls of […]
Planet Earth by P. K. Page
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet, has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness; and the hands keep on moving, smoothing the holy surfaces. ‘In Praise of Ironing’, PABLO NERUDA It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens, the way she moves her hands caressing […]