Poems

Keep silent, to yourself, and hide
your dreams and feelings deep inside —
Within your center let them rise
and set, like stars in crystal skies.
Don’t say a word, and let them be —
enjoy their beauty — silently.

How can the haze of words impart
what moves your mind, what stirs your heart?
Will someone know you if they try?
A thought once uttered is a lie.
Preserve the source’s clarity —
drink from its waters — silently.

Look in yourself, and there begin
to find a hidden world within.
The brightness from without you blurs
thoughts’ mystic figures, and obscures
their glowing, wordless melody —
so listen to them — silently!

Fyodor Tyutchev, 1830
trans. by A. Brož

I was a slave to nonsense once;
nonsense made more sense to me.
My images and sentences
were independent, always free.

Then changing did what changing does —
and with the chain of life’s events,
that wooed me by effect and cause,
I chose to bind myself to sense.

But I am under no illusion
that the sentence and the sense,
in constant whirlwinds of confusion,
ever form experience.

Experience, that always was
a wildfire in the brain,
kindles worlds that were the cause
until the ash of words remain.

In ice and order there is beauty,
but disorder is desire.
If my government is logic,
still — my God is fire.

Moonlight glistens by my bed —
I thought an autumn frost had come.
I watch the bright moon overhead.
Looking back, I think of home.

Li Bai (李白), 8th Century C.E.
trans. by A. Brož

Plop!
Startled birds —
rustle of a snake.

Clear sky.
Stones, rippling
heat.

Rain in the window
drums in the street —
no parade in sight.

Meltwater.
Ice runs,
skin on fire.

Seagull dives,
escapes a wave —
thrash of silver.

Lightning from towers:
cracks
in a glass city.

With sights on western lands, where rivers flowed
down wild mountains, full of promised gold,
they set out in a caravan. And God
was with them. But those dreaming rivers slowed
as they travelled down a long and faded road.
When golden seas of grass appeared untrod,
their days grew shorter, and the land grew old.
Decisions added to their growing load.

Soon late November filled with hungry snow.
The mountains, Argus-eyed and full of teeth,
rose over them, the moon bright as a blade.
With miles ahead, and nowhere left to go,
their bodies turned to meet their dead belief
in promises that no one ever made.