BLACK SEA – by Mark Strand “One clear night while the others slept, I climbed the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it, the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood …

YOUR HANDS – by Hai Zi “North Drawing your hands The hand picks off a glove They’re just two small lamps.”       SOMETIMES – by Hay Zi “Sometimes I sit alone in the wheat field of May      dreaming of my brothers I see cobblestones roll over the riverbank The arc sky at dusk fills the earth with sad …

FROM JUNE TO OCTOBER “Woman of June gathers water, gathers moonlight Woman of July sells cotton Woman under the August tree washes her ears I hear in the opposite window that the woman of September is engaged her ring like a wet chick in her pocket Woman of October blows out the candles of her wedding. Black doors fall on …

There was once a king and a queen who had a beautiful daughter. One day the girl was walking in the garden when a strong storm broke out that led her away with him. The storm was caused by the bird with nine heads. The king proclaimed that whosoever brought his daughter should have her in marriage. A young farmer …

PRUNING TREES – Po Chu-I “Before my window grow trees; tall trees and dense foliage grows. Sad, alas, the distant view of the mountains: obscured, between them, can be seen just One morning I took a knife and hatchet; with my own hands cut the flourishing branches. Myriads of leaves fall around me in the head, thousands of mountains appear …

HOW COULD I: “How could I hold it in me, my soul, that your material does not touch; as you remove it over, ad infinitum? I could hide it in a remote corner in the darkness; a stranger quiet refuge, which is not followed to vibrate if it vibrates your deep. But everything that touches us, you and me, together, …

NIGHT THOUGHTS – Li Bai In front of my bed the moon illuminates the earth As reflections of frost. I look up to the shining moon, then bowed his head: my land is far away.   MOORING AT NIGHT BRIDGE MAPLE – Zhang Ji The moon sets, ice crystals fill the sky, cry of a crow. In the river a …

A lone Vespa enthusiast, off Ocean Green Western Slovakia, has lost any reference point and can not find the way to Gabcikovo. Lost in the banks of the Danube, he experiences the special character of that expanse of grass, hay and water that surrounds it, but it changes its perceptions, visual and emotional, which are beyond its control. Start a …

“Love or blood? Throughout the spring peony is in this that haunts me. Night falls, I’m alone, alone without a poem.” Her name is Akiko and was born in a winter day in 1878, giving us by her death – in the spring of 1942 – the indelible charm of its tanka poems, where the five lines formed syllables (5, …

“I get lost if I encounter, I doubt if I find, I do not have if I got it. As if I walk, I sleep, but I’m awake. As if asleep, I wake up, and I do not belong. At the end of life is in itself a great insomnia and there’s a shiny rude awakening in everything we think …