You Start Dying Slowly  

By Pablo Neruda

“You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the

sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

… Read more

  Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the Fall,

I’d brush the Summer by

With half a smile, and half a spurn,

As Housewives do, a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,

I’d wind the months in balls —

And put them each in separate Drawers,

For fear the numbers fuse —

If only Centuries, delayed,

I’d count them on my Hand,

Subtracting, till my fingers dropped

Into Van Dieman’s Land.

… Read more

 The Journey      

 By  Rabindranath Tagore

 

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs;

and the flowers were all merry by the roadside;

and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds

 while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

 We sang no glad songs nor played;

 we went not to the village for barter;

we spoke not a word nor smiled;

 we lingered not on the way.

 We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

… Read more

       The Exile

        By Giuseppe Del Torre

                   Published 1955 

Here the sky is always smiling

Here the leaves are always green,

Here the water of the stream

Run sweetly at my feet,

But this soil is not my homeland.

Here the sun is always reflected

In the azure waters,

Lilies and violets

Grow all around me,

But this soil is not my homeland.

The maidens are as beauteous

As the fresh roses

Which love fashioned in their hair

As a token of fidelity;

But this soil is not my homeland.

In the regions of Italy

Is a queenly city;

The ligurian sea,

Always bathes its feet.

When you see it, it is my homeland.

My homeland it is.

In Blackwater woods

By Mary J. Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.

… Read more
 Original Persian 
غم را دیدم گرفته جام دردی
گفتم که غما خیر بود رخ زردی
گفتا چکنم که شادی آوردی
بازار مرا خراب و کاسد کردی
مولانا

 دیوان شمس

رباعیات– رباعی شمارهٔ۱۹۰۸  

 

 

English Translation by Coleman Bark

“I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, ‘It tastes sweet, does it not?’

‘You’ve caught me,’ grief answered, ’and you’ve ruined my business.

How can I sell sorrow, when you know it’s a blessing?”

                                                                                                        Rumi 

The War Will End 
by Mahmoud Darwish

The war will end

The leaders will shake hands

The old woman will keep waiting

for her martyred son.

That girl will wait for her beloved husband

and those children will wait

for their heroic father

I don’t know who sold our homeland

but I know who paid the price.

To An Early Friend
By Eleanor Agnes Lee 

It would be well, now that the years have gone,

To meet, to read under what time has drawn

Upon our faces

Unburied traces

Of the old tenderness.

It would be well, now that the years have gone ,

To meet again, even if on our lips

A smile for the old sorrows,

And in our eyes

The lights of other skies.

                                                  

Someday I would like to go home.

By Henry Rollins

Someday I would like to go home.

The exact location of this place, I don’t know,

but someday I would like to go.

 

There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw.

People would greet me warmly.

They would remind me of the length of the absence and the thousands of miles I had traveled in those restless years,

but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned.

Read more

نسیمی از دیار آشتی  

  از فریدون مشیری 

باری اگر روزی کسی از من بپرسد
«چندی که در روی زمین بودی چه کردی؟»

 

من می گشایم پیش رویش دفترم را
گریان و خندان بر می افرازم سرم را
آنگاه می گویم که : بذری نو فشانده است
تا بشکفد تا بردهد بسیار مانده است

                                       

در زیر این نیلی سپهر بی کرانه
                                      چندان که یارا داشتم در هر ترانه
نام بلند عشق را تکرار کر دم
با این صدای خسته شاید خفته ای را
در چارسوی این جهان بیدار کردم

 

من مهربانی را ستودم
من با بدی پیکار کردم

 

«پژمردن یک شاخه گل» را رنج بردم
«مرگ قناری در قفس» را غصه خوردم

وز غصه مردم شبی صدبار مردم  

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A Breeze from the Land of Peace

By Fereydoon Moshiri

English Translation 
by Franak Moshiri  March 2015 
Copyright © 2015-2025

Indeed, if someday, someone asks me,

“During your time on Earth, what did you do?”

I’ll open my book of verse before him,

I’ll hold my head up, laughing and crying,

I’ll say that this seed is “newly sown,”

It needs time to come to fruition and bloom.

Under this vast cerulean sky,  

With all my might, in very song, 

I evoked the revered name of love.  

Perhaps, by this weary voice, 

An oblivious someone was awakened,  Somewhere in the four corners of this world. 

I praised kindness, I battled against wickedness.

I suffered the “wilting of a single stem of flower1,” 

I grieved the “death of a caged canary,” 

And, for people’s sorrows, 

I died a hundred times a night.  

Read more

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott 
 

The time will come

when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. 

Give back your heart to itself,

to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, 

who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.