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Time & Brevity

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  • Poem

    December’s Ruler

    Translated By Daniel Owen
    December is a straight ruler, very straight,
    and broken in its straightness. A break
    hidden in its fracture, a break that
    sees silence from its fracture.

    And wind, and what groans below a ruler,
    and speaking, and tomorrow—January—January—will
    come along a past path. A path that...
  • Poem

    Penggaris Desember

    Translated By Daniel Owen
    Desember adalah penggaris yang lurus, lurus sekali,
    dan putus dalam kelurusannya. Putus yang
    tersembunyi dalam patahannya sendiri, putus yang
    melihat kesunyian dari patahannya sendiri.

    Dan angin, dan yang mengerang di bawah penggaris,
    dan berkata, dan besok—Januari—Januari—akan
    datang melalui jalur yang lalu. Jalur dengan bau
    rempah-rempah, gula, kopi,...
  • Poem

    Pencil Letter

    By Irina Ratushinskaya
    I know it won't be received
    Or sent. The page will be
    In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.
    Later. …
  • Poem

    Night Mirror

    By Li-Young Lee
    Li-Young, don’t feel lonely
    when you look up
    into great night and find
    yourself the far face peering
    hugely…
  • Poem

    In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz

    By William Butler Yeats
    The light of evening, Lissadell,
    Great windows open to the south,
    Two girls in silk kimonos, both
    Beautiful, one a gazelle.
    But a raving autumn shears
    Blossom from the summer's wreath;
    The older is condemned to death,
    Pardoned, drags out lonely years
    Conspiring among the ignorant.
    I know not...
  • Poem

    Byzantium

    By William Butler Yeats
    The unpurged images of day recede;
    The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
    Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
    After great cathedral gong;
    A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
    All that man is,
    All mere complexities,
    The fury and the mire of human veins.

    Before me floats an image,...
  • Poem

    Among School Children

    By William Butler Yeats
    I

    I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
    A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
    The children learn to cipher and to sing,
    To study reading-books and history,
    To cut and sew, be neat in everything
    In the best modern way—the children's eyes
    In momentary...
  • Poem

    Atom

    By Milan Děžinský
    Translated By Nathan Fields
    It is sixty-five years since Hiroshima,
    they write. Should one cup a handful of water from a river,
    there…
  • Poem

    The Covenant

    By Brenda Hillman
    Having stopped using dolphins to locate explosives in the Cold War
    they had 30 leftover dolphins.
    An officer…
  • Poem

    Black Cherries

    By W. S. Merwin
    Late in May as the light lengthens
    toward summer the young goldfinches
    flutter down through the day for…
  • Poem

    A Flower Given to My Daughter

    By James Joyce
    Frail the white rose and frail are
    Her hands that gave
    Whose soul is sere and paler
    Than time's wan wave…
  • Poem

    From within my bodily singularity

    By Julia Fiedorczuk
    Translated By Bill Johnston
    From within my bodily singularity
    I play at sending out gentle sunbeams.
    I don't believe in myself, but…
  • Poem

    Calling Things What They Are

    By Ada Limón
    I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    [Una estrella cayó al suelo…]

    By Tilsa Otta
    Una estrella cayó al suelo y rebotó en la sombra del sol
    Evoco esta escena cuando me asaltan temores …
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    [A star fell to the ground…]

    By Tilsa Otta
    Translated By Farid Matuk
    A star fell to the ground and bounced in the shadow of the sun
    I think of this scene when I’m taken by…
  • Poem

    The Book of Frank [“Frank’s sister grew long blue feathers”]

    By CAConrad
    Frank’s sister grew long blue feathers

    she said it was worse than cutting teeth

    she spent a month screaming in the cave
    pushing them out

    Frank would lie in bed at night
    touching his own back

    crying

    praying it wouldn’t
    come to him

    but the day his sister flew...
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