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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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