I spent my days in fun,
Now, Time’s up and I’m out of a job.
I used to go here and there making money,
Had brothers, friends, wife, and children
Who listened when I spoke. Now they scream at me
Just because I’m poor. Death’s
Field man is going to sit by my pillow
Waiting to grab my hair, and my friends
And relations will stack up the bier,
Fill the pitcher, ready my shroud and say
So long to the old boy
In his holy man’s get-up.
They’ll shout Hari a few times,
Dump me on the pile and walk off.
That’s it for old Ramprasad.
They’ll wipe off the tears
And dig in to their supper.

- Ramprasad Sen

Translated by Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.

Li Po

Translated by: Arthur Waley

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

- By: Pablo Neruda

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

- Emily Dickinson

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost

thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors

all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where

the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in

shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy

mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master

himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is

bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and

incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and

stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy

brow.

By: RABINDRANATH TAGORE

From: GITANJALI – “Song Offerings”

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immermorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzling staight and simple.
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

Wislawa Szymborska

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I’m sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.

She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ’s palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.

- Seamus Heaney

An intellectual is all the time showing off.

Lovers dissolve and become bewildered.

Intellectuals try not to drown,
while the whole purpose of loves
is drowning.

Intellectual invent
ways to rest, and then lie down~
in those beds.

Lovers feel ashamed
of comforting ideas.

You’ve seen a glob
of oil on water? That’s how a lover
sits with intellectuals, there, but alone
in a circle of himself.

Some intellectual
tries to give sound advice to a lover.

All he hears back is, I love you.

I love you.

Love is musk. Don’t deny it
when you smell the scent!

Love is a tree.

Lovers, the shade of the long branches.

To the intellectual mind, a child must learn
to grow up and be adult.

In the station of love,
you see old men getting younger and younger.

Shams chose to live low in the roots
for you. So now, he soars in the air
as you sublimely articulating love!

- Rumi
Version by: Coleman Barks