If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

 

Vera Pavlova

Empty Space

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.

He held my hand with a trembling hand.

“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.

Look, further on ahead, there

between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”

Amrita Pritam

translated from the Punjabi by D.H. Tracy & Mohan Tracy

Clay: 24

He took a chair
out to the garden
watched the shadow
kicked a stone.
Most of all
of late
the words hate me.


Yannis Ritsos
Athens—January 18, 1978

Like the Leaves

Forgetting
is like leaves.


Some fall
others are born.


They stop being leaves
only when the tree
stops being a tree.