The world in 10 poems

India smells of fruit and jasmine, in Africa a specter rises in the wake left by the war, and in Chile someone once wrote some nocturnal verses looking at the Pacific.

Since ancient times, the poets of the world have adapted the laws of nature to their verses, interpreting their own reality, that of touching with their fingers the world of dreams that man once forgot.

An existence seen through crystals as personal as universal that encompass this journey through the world in 10 poems.

Among the flowers, a bowl of wine
I drink alone, no friend is around.
I raise my glass, I invite the moon
and my shadow, and now we are three.
But the moon knows nothing of drinks
and my shadow is limited to imitate me,
but even so, moon and shadow will be my company.
Spring is a good time for enjoyment.
I sing and the moon prolongs its presence,
I dance and my shadow gets tangled.
As long as I stay sober, we're happy together
when I get drunk, each one walks by his side
vowing to meet in the Silver River of the heavens.

Drinking Alone in the Moonlight, by Li Bai (China)

The river advances, meekly, opening the night.
The stars, naked, tremble in the water.

The river traces a rustling line in the silence.
I have abandoned my boat to the whim of the waters.

Lying face to the sky I think of you who sleep, lost between dreams.
Perhaps now you dream of me, my love of nocturnal, wet starry eyes.
Soon my boat will pass in front of your house, my love, stretched out in your sleep
like a river.

Perhaps your sleeping mouth is throbbing for me, ajar.
A burst of fruit and jasmine arrives.

This wind has passed through your house and in it
I touch your dream and breathe in your aroma and kiss your mouth, my love that maybe now
you walk with me, in a garden, for your dream.

Behind your ear, between your hair, still damp from the bath, a jasmine burns, in your dream.
Give me your hand and look into my eyes, in your dream, my love, and gently drag me to the magic circle in which now, asleep, you smile.
I see, in the shadow of the shore, a little light that looks at me with a loving blink.
It is your home: for me the sweetest, the closest and farthest of the stars, my love.

The Star, by Rabindranath Tagore (India)

The show is that. Sword and vein.

A dreamer unable to see beyond the horizon.

Today is better than tomorrow but the dead are the ones

They will be renewed and born every day

And when they try to sleep, the slaughter will lead them

From his lethargy to a dreamless sleep. No matter

The number. Nobody asks anybody for help. The voices seek

Words in the desert and the echo responds

Sure, wounded: There is no one. But someone says:

«The murderer has the right to defend the intuition

of the dead man. The dead exclaim:

«The victim has the right to defend his right

to scream". The call to prayer rises

from the time of prayer to the

uniform coffins: coffins lifted hastily,

buried fast ... no time to

complete the rites: other dead arrive

hastily from other attacks, alone

or in groups ... a family does not leave behind

orphans or dead children. The sky is gray

leaden and the sea is blue-gray, but

the color of blood has overshadowed it

from the camera a swarm of green flies.

Green flies, by Mahmud Darwish (Palestine)

The earth is a prison

and the heavens guard the shooting stars.

Flees,

enter the throne of love,

for death is a creature,

and your place is exile.

Your secret has spread

and the length of your time arises from a rose.

You will visit an isthmus

and you will be annihilated,

but your soul will remain indecipherable.

Sayings of Exile, by Ahmad Al-Shahawi (Egypt)

My specter rose from the rain of lead,

And he declared "I am a civilian" achieving only

Increase your fear. But how would there be

To get up, I, a being of this earth, in that hour

Of impassive death! Then I thought:

your battle is not of this world.

Civilian and soldier, from Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)

For fun, the young sailors
hunt albatrosses, great birds of the seas
who follow slowly, indolent travelers,
the ship, that sails over abysses and hazards.

They are hardly thrown there on deck,
princes of blue, clumsy and ashamed,
the big white wing loose like dead
and they let her, like oars, fall to their sides.

How weak and useless now the winged traveler!
He, before so beautiful, how grotesque on the ground!
With his pipe one of them has burned his beak,
another imitates, limping, the invalid's flight.

The poet is the same ... Up there, in the heights,
What difference does it make arrows, lightning, a storm unleashed
Banished to the world, the adventure concluded:
His giant wings are of no use to him!

The Albatross, by Charles Baudelaire (France)

Long spectrum of silver moved ...

Long spectrum of silver shaken

the night wind sighing,

opened my old wound with a gray hand

and walked away: I was looking forward to it.

Wound of love that will give me life

perpetual blood and pure light gushing forth.

Crack in which Filomela is mute

it will have forest, pain and a soft nest.

Oh what a sweet rumor in my head!

I will lie down next to the simple flower

where your beauty floats without a soul.

And the wandering water will turn yellow,

while my blood runs in the undergrowth

wet and smelly from the shore.

Long Spectrum of Shaken Silver, by Federico García Lorca (Spain)

I've never seen a wasteland
and the sea I never got to see
but I have seen the eyes of the heather
And I know what the waves must be

I have never spoken with God
nor did I visit him in Heaven,
but I'm sure where I'm traveling from
as if they had given me the course.

Certainty, by Emily Dickinson (United States)

I am afraid to see you, need to see you, hope to see you, uneasiness to see you.

I want to find you, concern to find you, certainty to find you, poor doubts to find you.

I have an urge to hear you, joy to hear you, good luck to hear you and fears to hear you.

In short, I am screwed and radiant, perhaps more the first than the second and also vice versa.

Vicevera, by Mario Benedetti

Write, for example: «The night is starry,
and the blue stars shiver in the distance ».

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I also loved her.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I do not have her. Feeling I've lost her.

Hear the inmense night, even more without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to grass.

Does it matter that my love could not keep it.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's it. In the distance someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not content with having lost it.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze seeks her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, the ones then, are not the same.

I don't love her anymore, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Of other. Will be from another. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. His infinite eyes.

I don't love her anymore, it's true, but maybe I do.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I had her between my
arms, my soul is not content with having lost it.

Although this is the last pain that she causes me,
and these are the last verses that I write to him.

I can write the saddest verses tonight, by Pablo Neruda (Chile)

Did you like this trip around the world in 10 poems? Which one do you prefer?