1st lines

can you imagine just barely escaping a snowstorm
enough to witness it in all its glory at your tail's end
swallowing whole your home like a
sneaky fox and clueless lemming
swiftly, ...

From Where the Sea Kunuks the Land by Ashley Qilavaq-Savard

#1stlines #poetry #Innuit #Canada

1st lines

Remember.
The sow brought drops of sealing-wax and molten lead
and the lies of a little girl who had killed a swan,
and the gloved hand brought the dispersion of light and the murder
that seemed to go on forever,

Rafael Alberti tr by Mark Strand

#1stlines #poetry #Spain

1st lines

The one I wanted came,
the one I called.

Not the one who sweeps away defenceless skies,
stars without homes,
moons without a country,
snows.
The kind of snows that fall from a hand,
a name,
a dream,
a face.

Rafael Alberti tr by Mark Strand

#1stlines #poetry #Spain

1st lines

The waves, blue walls
of Africa, go and never come back.

When they go . . .
Ah, to go with them!

Ah, to come back with them!
When they come back . . .

Rafael Alberti translated by Mark Strand

#1stlines #poetry #Spain #Argentina

1st lines

Since there's bending
You feel it bent
Apply for carnival and for protest
Since there's bending
The Run for Sight
Recumbency makeover bent grass sort
Since there is bending
You feel it bent

From Hungry Slingshots by Louis Cabri

#1stlines #poetry #Canada

1st lines

Since our bond
was shallow as an inlet one might ford on foot
without even wetting one's robe

I hope to pass again
through the gate at meeting hill

Waka by Ariwara Narihira tr by H.Mack Horton

#1stlines #poetry #waka #Japan #translation

1st lines

You know it: adoration of the mother
Because we got souls she looked, because she looked out
for us
No sweetener! "The client may feel your not interested"

From Hungry Slingshots by Louis Cabri 2020

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

1 you smell damp, is it raining?
2 nice and dry in here
1 two hundred seats not even half full
2 Japanese film week?
1 funny how Americans dislike subtitles
2 you said this one's a film noir?
1 what I like about you, baby, ...

From Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Little tough ones, little tall ones, others yellow as hay, their tiny blades falling across the cracks, the stones. Blades moving a bit. There is no reason for you to wonder about this. Keep listening. Keep glancing out, ...

From Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

#1stlines #poetry

1st Lines

Poverty is a scapegoat.
We drive them out!
"Hermes, I shiver like crazy, give Hipponax a cloak."
(Don't look it in the eyes.)
We forbid you asking "in God's name" for bread.
We distinguish relative (some teeth) from absolute ...

From Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Oh that the dew
Might keep from falling while I thread it
Into a string of jewels
Upon the hedge of white deutzia flowers
Clustered beneath its crystal weight

Fujiwara Teika tr by Earl Miner 1200

#1stlines #poetry #waka

1st lines

The fate of the earth. The fate of me. The fate of you. The fate of Faisal. The fate of the court where Faisal will plead his case. The fate of the court's bias. Every court has a bias. It sifts to the surface gradually. The fate of ...

From Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of palms, no more,
No other picture. There's no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended

Robinson Jeffers

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Counterpoint 80s speculation against the
clamping gate takes us whole
through collisions of semantic torques
twists on the page saddle
us to a fiery buck
assertively thrusting those isolate recognitions
(against the credits ...

From The Lores by Robert Sheppard 2003

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Let's lie down on the tatami mats
with the flies buzzing around us.
Someone said this morning that
even the tatami has turned yellow.

As I rambled on about this and that,
memories come to mind.
...

Nakahara Chuya 中原 中也 tr by Christian Nagle

#1stlines #poetry #Japan

1st lines

On a black night in a grassy field,
a beast struck a flint
in a fire pot and made a star.
Winter sits and the wind howls.

The beast saw nothing anymore.
Embracing castanets, moonlight,
and other stars ....

Nakahara Chuya 中原 中也 tr by Christian Nagle

#1stlines #poetry #Japan

1st lines

today again a little snow
falls on the ruined sorrow
today again even the wind
blows through ruined sorrow

ruined sorrow is
for example a fox's hide
on ruined sorrow
a little snow falls and it shrinks

Nakahara Chuya 中原 中也 tr by Christian Nagle

#1stlines #poetry #Japan

1st lines

Dull silver, the window gently frames
a branch of flowers. Peach flowers.

Moonlight faints into the garden's
top soil . . . velvet beauty spots.

Ah, nothing, there's nothing to it:
trees, be bashful as you come and go.

中原 中也 tr by Christian Nagle

#1stlines #poetry #Japan

1st lines

tin roof snapping up senbei
in a calm spring dusk
ash thrown underhand turning pale
becomes a quite spring dusk

ah! is there a scarecrow?---there cannot be
will a horse neigh?---perhaps not even that
it is only ...

Nakahara Chūya 中原 中也 tr by Christian Nagle

#1stlines #poetry #Japan

1st lines

The song has no title. It breaths
all of the oxygen in the room, but thats all roght.
We sing along anyway
if we know what's good for us.
The song has no molecules,
can't be held in our hands or passed around

From The Song Collides by Calvin Wharton 2011

#1stlines #poetry #Vancouver