1st lines

It's dark
and late
and still.
Let me hear
your voice --
once again
once more --
the sound
of your voice
as you spek
my name.
Let me feel
your touch --
and again
as before --
against
all the cold
in the night
out there
kept away
by the fold
of your arms.

Gael Turnbull

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Lamp wick turned up, the room glows white.
The loom moves easily all night long

as feet work and push below.
Nimbly the shuttle flies in and out,

wide or narrow, big or small, sliding in snug.
...

Hồ Xuân Hương 胡春香 tr by John Balaban

#1stlines #poetry #Vietnam

1st lines

Before dawn, the watch drum tumbles.
Lonely pink face among mountains and streams

addled but alert with a cup of fragrant wine
as the moon sets, just a sliver not yet full.

Moss seems to creep across the earth's face.
...

Hồ Xuân Hương 胡春香 tr by John Balaban

#1stlines #poetry #Vietnam

1sr lines

my ancestral throat
wants to howl loudly
you know the kind
a deep language of sound
administered from the belly
of my inner core
breathe work soldifying
beastly sounds by vibrating pencil marks
through an inkling
who suddenly ...

by Michelle Sylliboy

#1stlines #poetry #Canada #Mi'kmaq

1st lines

On the housetop, the flow of the boundless
where the birds and storms fly and dissapera,
and the valley opened over our heads, a leap
of clarity between the hills, we bent five days
in the sun, tearing free the old roof, nailing on
the new, ...

Wendell Berry

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

And brought back from her travels, equisite
fabrics: silk damask, dupioni gold ---
each one inscribed in Arabic as of old.

Come my aunties, weave, stitch, new masks for me.
I've come from afar, I've crossed all the seas.

Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

Oakm and throw down: split acorns
The Beggar Boy runs to catch and hold.

Catalpa, pendulous green overhangs
The Beggar Boy trips and falls. Gets up again.

Cedar, scent remembering-forgetting, sent ---
...

From Bramah and the Begger Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

This is a story recorded one day
by that blind girl who saw everything and

by Bloody-eyed Jim: his hands all over

things stolen, bartered and traded: androids,
cracked laser plates, them WiFi access codes
...

From Bramah and the Begger Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

By this time so used were we to wattle and clay,
we always knew to begin that way

We longed for plastic, the bend and bright
of foil and aluminium strong.

Oh, the sheen of nylon, its many uses,
...

From Bramah and the Begger Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

No perimeter walking allowed.
Not ever.
A long time since
what measure might come,
in the days ahead
partial fragments yielded
a small find,
once the park had been cleared
The hive. A honeybee.
...

From Bramah and the Begger Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

At noon the tennis courts, wet with rain, rare:
we counted eleven honey locust
branches thickened with moss.

Six birds nests, omens --- forget-me-not ---
Long-tongued, the distance between
Short-tongued ...

From Bramah and the Begger Boy by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

霜まよふ
空にしをれし
雁が音の
帰る翼に
春雨ぞ降る

Confused by frost
In the leaden sky
The geese call
Returning north
Through spring rain

Fujiwara Teika tr by Steven Forth

#1stlines #poetry #waka #translation

1st lines

大空は 梅の匂ひに 霞みつつ 曇りも果てぬ 春の夜の月

The great sky is the scent of plums growing hazy
Not fully clouded over the moon on a spring night

Fujiwara Teika translated by Steven Forth

#1stlines #poetry #translation #waka

1st lines

Rising from the river,
Does the roar of waves break in upon the sleep
Of the Uji villagers,
So that even at night their way is perilous
Across the floating bridge of dreams

Nami no oto ni
Uji no satobito
Yoru sae ya
...

Fujiwara Teika translated by Robert Brower

#1stlines #poetry #waka

1st lines

Small wiry brown-skinned yet British; sky, too
quick, skilled with lock and key, long black hair
braids touching her leather packsack: tools plus
lasers, all the latest gadgets for openings
no lock that ever ...

From Bramah and the Beggar Boy, Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#1stlines #poetry

1st lines

The deer lay near my head. It
was a night that felt as if another night had come behind it,
then another behind that night, stacking. The deer
rolled on his (her?) shoulder
toward my mouth, this
...

From The Volcano's High Held Snow Note by Tim Lilburn

#1stlines #poetry #Canada #BC

1st lines

a red room, tongued from a second place, thick
with covenated mountain ranges,
coastal, reached only by under-rain logging roads,
drifting through
dripping, charcoal fir, west shore, ...

From The Volcano's High Held Snow Note by Tim Lilburn

#1stlines #poetry #Canada #BC

1st lines

Matted snow with hard crust
unfolds, linen cloth, on the west face,
the male hummingbird broken
from sleep, its seal,
stilled at the just thawed feeder.

Final dark, snow
breathes down between monstrous firs

From The Volcano's High Held Snow Note by Tim Lilburn

#1stlines #poetry #Canada

1st lines

if I give my heart to the land will it hold grief like I do? too tightly and too long
it rolls in like a thick ice fog in the dead middle of winter
drowning in debilitating delicacy

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

#1stlines #poetry #Innuit #Canada

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