Poetry in translation

Tonight a wind plays attentively
–mindful of that loud clashing of blades—

First an earthy earth,
then another—no, the very same
suddenly unearthly.

(Elba Songs)

In Chiessi, the fish came from the sea in the morning

after the Costa del Sole sunsets,

where one makes love overhanging the Tyrrhenian Sea,

there is a lone man on the cusp
on a wide-open palm of stone quarried
where the pressure of plural millennia of magma
and wind, after, where once was sea, 
have left uplands of igneous isles to traverse

The silences yearn and the sun falls.
The first, great dark cleaves
the brown humps of a valley
that reposes. A shattered moon hangs

Ionian, from the dark depths emerged the waters
from the hoarse and mighty voice of the underground
was generated the blind furrow of the Mediterranean.
Volcanoes and shadows took shape, and the sea

On certain November afternoonsa shine of water slidesover windows in the room and the aquariumof your life dense with silence likea household wave it rises up unfeignedto lap the walls and the opalescentreflection of the absent ones: they’re lined uplike a small army on the dresser,two-dimensional and smiling from their frontierlimbo, they seem to want

Translated from the Russian by Margaree Little THE STALIN EPIGRAM We live, not sensing the country beneath us, our speech can’t be heard at ten steps away, but where there is room for a half-conversation, there we remember the mountaineer in the Kremlin. His thick fingers, like maggots, are fat, and his words, like pound-weights,

translated from the Slovene by Miriam Drev    from BECKETT – MY ADVOCATE 2 where a blind alley ends where you train silence to be voice what is a bird’s twittering without your word how do you appear without water in yourself you’re made of air and light you say body and here you are

Translated from the Spanish by Lynn Levin For Pablo Bacho What is the land, what is oblivion and what map bestows its gaze upon us: perhaps the stretch marks weep, ask us to what we might give birth without fire or stone. So many birds clutter the soul flighty and abandoned. Tell me, brother, which

translated from the Finnish by Niina Pollari Sisyphus Nobody had seen Sisyphus since the birth of the universe, when he disappeared with his rock somewhere beyond the clouds. “That’s not how the story went,” my daughter stated. Go to sleep now I said and smoothed her sun-woven hair. I closed the curtains, let the twilight

One Poem by Linda Maria Baros, translated from the French by Kathryn Kimball Float within four walls, where darkness takes on body, let yourself be carried along the sides into their aquarium infinity, as if in amniotic fluid. (This is the world where you let yourself be carried into emptiness, hanging on to the open

Translated from the French by Elaine Terranova from The Last Children’s Book (Le dernier livre des enfants) (untitled) I write because I am going to disappear. It was there, My little girl sitting in the stairway, I look at her between the rails Let’s not move I love just to go on It’s important to

/ forecast / errors /   image may contain palm trees sky clouds forecast errors image ocean open eye of a five-category hurricane may be twelve hours of a monstrous burgeoning storm contain winds of a hundred sixty miles an hour image spa glassy hotels tennis courts golf courses pools may be women crying in

Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter)   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter)   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the French by Eliot Cardinaux THE PRODIGAL’S TORCH The quarantined enclosure burned You cloud move ahead Cloud of resistance Cloud of caverns Towing hypnosis. ONGOING TRUTH The crevice’s inventor Tugs tumult’s rope We gauge the depth Along the riled contours of the thigh The quiet blood that releases Confuses the needles Raises love

Translated from the Italian by Anna Aresi  Silence Silence will come to me the silence that enters the garments of the dead. The moment was poor (abandoned and wounded) and our skies were foreign. We will flee looking for a Revolution, howled the wind, and our last days screamed, wounded. * Alleyway I A tavern

Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft from: MLB, Sofostrofa i inne wiersze, Kraków 2007 MLB, Porumb, Poznań 2013 9 beers for ox-calling The castors on the chair bellow like a wounded bull, weevil. Except the hearing is more sensitive this Tuesday morning excessive as a peeking squirrel. I remember Erzsébet Bridge, women were shaving

Translated from the Greek by Maria Nazos Case Study I The light falls lower now— Shadows on the steep mountains The atmosphere calm as meek milk and the griping city flock trudges through nothing.  Between reality and hope where the empty moment was revealed the mind spreads its images. Dividing      distinguishing      varying it struggles to

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Banach A Hunt at Water’s Edge Rushing browns. Ochres. Crimsons. Cinnabars falling to the ground. On vaults. On walls. In the fire. Scratching and wallowing. Down below some shrubs, a lake, or maybe a river. Taut backs of shadows. To be so close to the shimmer. At dusk. At

Translated from the French by Susanne Petermann Child at the Window A child watches out the window for his mother. The hour is endless….never before has he felt such aching in his soul. All these passing strangers, one the same as the next.  It isn’t really their fault if they don’t measure up. His eyes

Translated from the Russian by Kutik and Reginald Gibbons. Prayer (Theme and Variations) If only I knew what new Keats Time has so intently fixed in its gaze, licking its lips with the tongue of its  pendulum. Pendulum—sharp double-edged plait on the peruke of Time. Time!—in the reign of which Frederick or Paul did you

Translated from the Spanish by Susan Ayres   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.    

Translated from the Braj Bhasa by Chloe Martinez   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

Translated from the Ukranian by Andrew Sheppard   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Christine Chraibi   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

Translated from the Spanish by Ariel Francisco Homeland Homeland from your starved latitude I felt my people rise through sonorous essences and heavy breaths. Homeland I felt how you grip through my blood squeezing my throat bruising my neck screaming along to my song. I witnessed your anguish from afar blooming in treetops erupting from

Translated from the Polish by Ewa Chrusciel Leopolis semper fidelis Seemed like forever and ever Until Stalin stole it And now Putler bombs it You’ll see, you scum You will see Soot of Moscow, smoking ruins of your cities Polluted Forever cursed and dead There won’t be anybody left to rebuild When stone upon stone

Translated from the Ukrainian by Bożena Boba-Dyga  and Ewa Chrusciel   The biggest dream: to be with you all at Easter To gather for Easter. This Easter. Greetings, my family; what’s new, Mom? Mom is baking bread as always. My dear ones are all alive. My peace of mind quivers on a line. “My” dear

translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti   Aidoios The word Αἰδοῖος is untranslatable. It is connected to the particular kind of respect due to an unfortunate person who is begging us… It is not to our credit that neither French nor, as far as I know, any other modern language has a word to

translated from the French by Jerrice J. Baptiste     In the hollow of a dark and quiet mountain, where the wind stops blowing, leaves of the trees are silent birds don’t sing. You don’t even hear the sound of silence. It was midnight, the sky was overcast no moon, no stars a mysterious but

translated from the Polish Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese   fire: cleansing into the lid of a big jar father pours methylated spirits lets me set it on fire over the flame he singes the cold body of a duck heart or liver? he asks though he knows that mother will save the liver for me apparently thanks

translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin Obstacle Because of poetry beans burn milk spills one forgets to change clothes go inside out the baby cries in hunger one misses the train. But one goes on. Who knows to where, to what anonymous cloud. With the Word, the Poem Don’t put another music to the

translated from the Slovene by the author   from THE DOORS OF NO RETURN (fragments from the epos) Book One: MAPS OF NOSTALGIA Notebook One: THE ADDRESS  Canto Two: THE ANCESTRAL TREE 1 … I was a reflection on the quick mirror of the water, and I was a shadow on the running window of

from CHILD translated from the Hebrew by Seth Michelson Stricken A fallen angel always remembers height is depth, the wings – the fear; how his heart exfoliated leaf by leaf till left stark naked. An angel that fell from love to hope flaps its ghost wings in vain; parched and starved, his hands stretched out

translated from Italian by Wally Swist from L’Allegria/Cheerfulness (Poems 1914-1919) Nostalgia When night fades just before the springtime and it is a rare person who passes Over Paris a dark color weeping thickens In a poem of a bridge I contemplate the incalculable silence of a slender girl Our afflictions merge together And how carried

translated from Slovenian by Manja Maksimovič   On the Charles Bridge instead of a passion play hordes of tourists with short-term memory loss unknowingly enact the role of refugees. There is no more space for genuine puppeteers. In souvenir shops the Good Soldier Švejk is rarely represented. He has been replaced by Hello Kitty. At

translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese Second bell Hens are for the motherland ducks are against. And the dog is divided. For a moment he turns his bloodshot eyes to the sky. Then his gaze drops to the road again. In dust up to his armpits comes a toothless man who likes to tease. As

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from German by the author and Stuart Friebert 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl 

Translated from Spanish by Stephen Kessler   The sky cut up by bars, cells of so many hopeless jails The rounded light of the ox’s eye and a sailor once more defying the storm. Sky bloody with senseless falling missiles, because of so many treasured hatreds. The most intense blue of a huge twilight under

Translated from Polish by Katarzyna Jakubiak   [a small, local church. we hide there] a small, local church. we hide there from the pouring rain. a few sniffling saints watch us curiously with their eyes weathered by looking into eternity. women nailed for ever to the first rows raise prayers to christ, who quite effectively

Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska, and Patricia Marsh Ingrid Jonker writes to Olivera Korveziroska A bullet in the head would do you good, a jump off a bridge or a cut wrist, hydrochloric acid in your tea, your husband’s belt round your neck, at the wrong time, in the wrong place death is an

translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, Yale University Press, 2019. Interview conducted by Dzvinia Orlowsky,  July 8, 2019   DO:  Thank you, Virlana, for taking the time to speak with me about your and Wanda Phipp’s process in translating this extraordinary collection.  I’d like to begin by quoting lines from one of Zhadan’s poems

to wash clothes on a saturday afternoon among the workers shot during the rural strikes of 1920 and 1921 there were surely indigenous men who forty years earlier had freely roamed the southern territories the peasants as they were called asked for saturday afternoon to wash clothes those whom we’d today call the indigent williches

          Mari Epu He drank drops of light from a wooden cup, cold sweat of the resilient, delirious dead. That’s why he dances and lives amid stiff ferns, flinging himself onto the fallow mud. They saw him on the summit, singing demented, trembling and soaking wet, like an old nag. He

Political Poem All the guns are buried in the sky awaiting Autumn’s order to disarm A full barrage lifts up the legendary palace lifts up the joking emperor All the guns are explicating me their injuries also in the silent parts bleeding days, bullets are intelligent All of my selves are pummeling the allies carving

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from German by Stuart Friebert 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Slovenian by Brian Henry 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Italian by Richard Jackson 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. From R: exist-stance (2017). Translated from Italian by Anna Aresi. 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. From R: exist-stance (2017). Translated from Italian by Anna Aresi. 

translated from the Slovene by Martha Kosir AN UNWRITTEN POEM I dreamt of a poem: beautiful and wholesome. A polished crystal ball. An open cage, filled with the golden, autumn brightness of the Karst. Inside it, emptiness that cradled a music box in its heart. The sound of a dead bird’s flapping wings. And the

translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese Translator’s note: These translated poems are excerpts from Elegía Joseph Cornell/Elegy for Joseph Cornell, an experimental book by María Negroni (Spanish language, Argentina) about Joseph Cornell–as well as about his subjects (including “Godiva” and other actors—among them, children–from his fairytale film Children’s Party). Elegy for Joseph Cornell

translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk I know, simplicity isn’t in demand. Minimalism, yes, but nothing excessive (maybe a spiderweb in the corner of the poem). I don’t care for comparisons. I cross out, proofread, clean up. I leave one loose thread.

translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik Contraband Years ago, when Mrs. Kubicka saw a plane in the sky, she’d throw down her scythe and hide in the grain. Now she’s flying for the first time to her daughter in America. Who’s getting married, Mrs. Kubicka says, to some good-for-nothing. Under her clothes, she’s smuggling her

translated from Polish by Artur Sebastian Rosman TRIPTYCH     (part I – left panel)   Early morning (not rosy-fingered dawn) they sleep still in the tent. I step out onto a narrow path above a plate-glass lake, take in the scent, wet flesh, of fresh-cut wood; springing on loose boards, I sound out empty knocks

translated from Italian by Gregory M. Pell At times it seems the  product of nothingness  the day spent on trollies or in café showcases. Our cities lack sentinels, rather those who stay awake do so by trade or out of distrust.  And the enemy, no one, has ever seen him coming. Having Lived with Relentless

Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh                                                            You, who were so alive,                        

Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh   What bed will I breathe my last on? On some train, on some crossroads? With the curtain up or down? At noon or at dead of night? Is it fate, a curse or good luck to breathe your last in someone’s presence? A part of

Translated from French by Richard Jackson #7 The poem says to the blind what the poet does not see #11 Facing the seas A cliff of words Cracks open #35 Forgotten in the dust of ruins the bricks of memory #37 My words are no more than the threads a spider’s that a slight breeze

Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert She climbed into her red canoe without a paddle on a road heavy as lead, without water apples in her pack, absent a future, postcards in gaping shoes, dead holiday greetings yesterday, superseded, freezes, in the faces behind the blinds, the dark’s falling guillotines in the last crack,

Nothing survived the Annunciation except rocks and the hard shadows of cypresses. Fright in her eyes, she smiles, trapped in the interior of a painting, her hands dirty before she is dragged away in the deathly air. What is beauty if not the roundness of her arms. Or the young Tobias, at war with the

As the moon shadows the jasmine bush and the star-shaped blossoms curl, he utters a cry of surprise and delight, but damns the nocturnal insects swarming the jasmine, stinging and biting. He smells the dark avenues that run through the garden, the dazzling pale white flowers fading in and out. And yet the moment fills

1. Spring is born anew without memory of past lives and the experience of leaves and flowers. A drop of blood spilled on a white carnation petal may appear to signal a trace of Ariel’s random crime, but there are no other clues and no secret police in the flowers. Roots that dig deep into

  The old woman who ate cabbage everyday with roasted bread crumbs, a matron in the backyard —most finicky and industrious— makes bobbin-lace. The one next-door lost her daughter, little Eve, who drowned in the Sava. At night another neighbor chats to her man who is no more, by day she knits mittens for winter.

  as in childhood I trust only the simple things water air light water always finds a way it circumvents every obstacle it widens every crack the invisible air lets itself be seen in the motion of branches and twigs in the spray of waves it uncovers roofs breaks down trees only the light has

for days I’ve been mulling over my report on my work with refugees by no means can I put it on paper this smell this smell of humans of the human being this sharp and sweetish smell a mixture of urine vomit menstrual blood blood feces scared people’s sweat for days I’ve been mulling over