Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) : "The Divine Comedy"

    

       The glory of the One who moves all things

permeates the universe and glows

in one part more and in another less.

       I was within the heaven that receives 

more of His light; and I saw things that he

who from that height descends, forgets or can

       not speak; for nearing its desired end,

our intellect sinks into an abyss

so deep that memory fails to follow it.

       Nevertheless, as much as I, within

my mind, could treasure of the holy kingdom

shall now become the matter of my song.



From "The Divine Comedy"
Paradiso, Canto I
Everyman's Library

The Divine Comedy

Translation Allen Mandelbaum (1926 - 2011)

Woodlands

The poet is right ... if He is fire i must be wood.

Woodlands, cover of the book

  from the sparrow's notebook

Joris Ivens (1898-1989) : "Regen"

Poem on Film format.

Seamus Heaney (1939 - )

                                       
                                                                
                                                                


From "Diary of One Who Vanished"
a new version of "A Song Cycle" by Leos Janacek
of "Poems" by Ozef Kalda
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2000
"Diary of One Who Vanished"

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) : "Sonnet XLVII"

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other:

When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love's picture then my eye doth feast

And to the painted banquet bids my heart;

Another time mine eye is my heart's guest

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:

So, either by thy picture or my love,

Thy self away, are present still with me:

For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

      Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
      
      Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.


From "Sonnets"
Shakespeare's Sonnets



Dedicated to my grandfather Mariano.

W. S. Merwin (1927- ) : "Note"

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions



From "The Shadow of Sirius"
Copper Canyon Press 2009
The Shadow of Sirius

Rabia of Basra (c.717-801) : "It Acts Like Love"

It acts like love - music -

it reaches toward the face, touches it, and tries to let you know

His promise: that all will be okay.

It acts like love - music and,

tells the feet, "You do not have to be so burdened."

My body is covered with wounds

this world made,

but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said,

"Could you also kiss the hand that caused

each scar,

for you will not find me until

you do."

It does that - music - help us

to forgive.

From "Love Poems from God"

Edited & Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Penguin Compass 2002

Love Poems from God