Poetry in Our Time
Christine Chen
1
Forgiveness
In fact, voices came from all around,
But I only heard the ticking of the clock and the pattering of dewdrops.
Birdsong and petals falling.
In fact, there were bursts of explosions coming from a distant unknown place,
Carrying the cries of despair and death.
I mistook them for the wind blowing.
In fact, there were various scenes:
Burning flames, bullets, and a sky on fire.
The end of Pompeii before it arrived.
But I only saw the moon rising, startling the mountain birds,
The night wind lifting a corner of the curtain.
And there were butterflies, golden butterflies in sunflowers,
white butterflies in the morning glories.
I could distinguish them all, one by one.
Forgive my insignificance—
Leave the task of saving the Earth to God;
Saving wars and orphans to the great leaders;
Saving earthworms and withered trees to myself;
Loving me to you
2
The Red Rider
Epigraph: A red horse was given power to take peace
from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword…
—Revelation, the Bible
My eyes sink into the depths of your gaze
I see what you see—
Sunrise and sunset, birds and beasts
The nautilus opens and closes, corals bloom for millennia
I also see what you cannot see
Bombs are thrown into the chest of the earth
Ruins riddled with stray bullets
The oceans are littered with non-decomposable waste
Ships drift above, carrying
Displaced people seeking refuge…
Glaciers melt, submerging island after island—
Erased permanently from the map
Gluttonous greed overflow
Out from the eyes of politicians and arms dealers
Larger than the appetite of Jurassic dinosaurs
More devouring than fallen angels—
Yet they appear so charming
Your book of wisdom is still revered
The church stands on Snake Island
Few enter, fewer understand
Dust covers ancient scrolls, I open
To the page marked by a Bodhi leaf bookmark—
“The Lamb opened the second seal…”
The clouds in the sky burning, the sea around us boiling
You walk out from my gaze，speechless
a New Zealand writer, poet, translator, and newspaper editor, won the 30th Italian “Ossi di Seppia” Award for Best Foreign Writer in 2023. Her works have been translated into nearly 20 languages and are housed in institutions such as the Royal Library of Belgium and the University of Rome. She currently serves as a committee member of the World Poetry Movement, the coordinator for Oceania, and an ambassador for the UN-registered Writer Capital International Foundation.
KESHAB SIGDEL (Nepal)
Two poems in solidarity with the people of Palestine
Against the Devil on the Move
We are sleepless since ages
But we are awake since ages
Assuming us asleep, your men bombarded our homes
The pigeons sheltering in them flew far and away
To tell the world your cowardice act.
In a rage,
Your men arrested and chained us
The wind that touched our body grew into a gush of storm
And blew your fort
Constructed in the swamp of greed and inhumanity.
In response we spoke
We spoke against your cruelty
So, you pulled out our tongues
But those tongues yelled even more louder to reveal your deeds
To let the world know the devil on the move.
You grew more insane
You poked into our eyes with the bayonet of the guns
The moon and the stars witnessed your crimes
Before the sponsored cameras distorted the truths.
Yes, last night, a lot of us died
But that is not the end of the story
We resurrected back to life
We marched to the open field
Not to avenge your crime
But to ensure justice to our people
Now, we fear no death
We fear no bullets
Our bones have turned into launchers
Our skin became the shield
Our eyes superseded the darkest of your thoughts
And our mouths exploded
Against your atrocities
Living, we will fight with our voices
Dead, we will fight with our memories
Now you will see us everywhere
Yes, we are Palestinians.
The testimony of a morning in Gaza
The sun rays
entered into the room
through small punctures in the wall
and flooded over my mother’s shawl
that spread over my body
The smoke from the clay oven
raised and tossed the walls of the chimney,
and returned to the room, making it hazy,
forming a smoke cloud seeking its way out
through ventilations
The milk kettle whistled, and
the foam oozed out of the lid;
A white stream ran down the kitchen slab
trickling on the floor drop by drop
Whining Malaika, my puppy, wasn’t sure
why I didn’t join her for the morning game
She moved out of the room
with an apprehensive gaze through her half-closed eyes
She had probably sniffed that something wasn’t right
They did it all early this morning
I could not wait to say to her–
I’m sorry
I was dead
but not annihilated
Now is the hour of Al-Qiyamah,
the rising of the Dead!
Brief Bio
Keshab Sigdel is the author of Samaya Bighatan (‘Dissolution of Time’, 2007) and Colour of the Sun (Poesis, 2017). He has edited Madness: An anthology of world poetry (RedPanda Books, 2023) featuring 297 poets from 101 countries/territories. He also edited a volume of Nepali poetry, An Anthology of Contemporary Nepali Poetry (Big Bridge, 2016). His recent work of translation Shades of Color (Nepal Academy, 2021), is a collection of indigenous Nepali poetry. Besides poetry, he also writes fiction, literary essays and plays. He is the Editor of Poetry Planetariat, a global poetry magazine published by World Poetry Movement. He also co-edited Of Nepalese Clay, literary journal of the Society of Nepali Writers in English and Rupantaran, a journal of translation published by Nepal Academy. Sigdel teaches Poetry and Literature of War, Conflict and Trauma at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. He is also active as a rights activist with extensive involvement in human right education, policy lobbying with home government and international agencies and has faced a dozen of arrests for his public activism.
Dorothy Payne
There Will Be No Forgetting
“You ask me why I care, why I risk all that I am—
have been—
and I’ll tell you:
‘Things keep happening’”
(Pablo Neruda)
Things keep happening:
I’ve seen the walls that darken
the Negev,
that blinded the world
to Mohammad al Duri.
There is no escaping
borders that get higher
and wider
darkening the landscapes
of Death.
I’ve heard the screams in
the night,
tasted the sulfured air
after their killing
I’ve been there.
Watched as they wrestled
men, women, children
to the ground
like terrified, sacrificial sheep:
made to see it over, and over, and over again on T.V.—
in our sleep—
made us complicit—
there, now, here;
made us witness
their lynchings
in the streets—
revealed the horrors to come:
and they have—
one, by one,by one…
boys, young sons,grown men
slaughtered like lambs;
our heads hooded along
with theirs:
virtual killings
on our names;
sent us scrambling
to stay safe ourselves,
desperate to figure out
how to survive this horror:
desperate to
just breathe.
What to do with all this death?
This is the question
that holds us now,
threatens our own
gasping for air
as the looping truth
returns again,
and again,
and again
in 10th dimensions clarity:
There is no past,
No “over there”.
It lives here
everywhere
Where the Slaughters of Greed
muzzle the baby calf
who just wants
to suckle it’s mother;
murders the man
who just needs breathe;
strangled the woman
who dares to speak;
degrades the man
whose land
he stands upon;
slaughters the boy
with his hands
in the air…
There can be no forgetting this:
No forgetting this terror
closing in on us;
no forgiving the green
in the pockets
of those who choose
not to see;
no forgetting the fondling
under our sheets;
no ignoring the stains
on our own clothes
if we fail to put
our bodies to the ground
to stop all this;
no wallowing in the sorrow
of our perfect knowledge
of all of this;
no forgetting
the dollars for drones
with our morning toast.
No,
there will be no forgetting this.
Things keep happening in
this deepening darkness:
the dead keep dying;
the flags keep flying
and the bankers keep
stockpiling the spoils of oil
as the children keep starving.
No, no forgetting this:
the disrobing
of the teachers,
the doctors,
the warriors
humiliated in
streets;
the maiming
of the babies
crying out
for their mothers
fathers;
the silencing of
the Poets…
the silencing…
No,
there will be no forgetting
this.
Dorothy (Dottie) Payne—USA
World Poetry Movement