Tag Archives: heart

Mi no wani wan ati di n’ abi kra I wish for no heart without a soul #BlackLivesMatter #poem Surinam

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Surinam is a country with the rule of law and a democracy in Latin America, but counted under the Caribbean like Trinidad and Tobago. Sranantongo is the language. The language is part Dutch, part Indonesian and also has traces of Indian-Indonesian and Chinese-Indonesian. Surinam was a country partly build by slaves and taken from many Indigenous peoples. Google it.

Awese (Winti religion: a good spirit)
Light in the everlasting Dark Moon
Johanna Schouten/Elsenhout

a mindri fu strei fu aladei
In the midst of the struggle of everyday
te midden van de strijd van alledag

.
Duman

Mi no wani
wan ati
di n’ abi kra
mi wani
wan yeye d’ e libi

mi n’e wer’
susu
di n’e fit’mi
m’e wer’
mi eigi krompu

mi n’e sdon
luku
a fesi fu sma
m’e luku ini
mi eigi spikri

Human of the Deed

I wish for
no heart
without a soul
I want
a mind who lives

I wear
no shoes
that do not fit me
I wear
my own clogs

I am not
watching
the faces of others
I look in
my own mirror

Mens van de daad

Ik wil
geen hart
dat geen ziel heeft
ik wil
een geest die leeft

ik draag
geen schoenen
die mij niet passen
ik draag
mijn eigen klompen

ik zit niet
te kijken
naar het gezicht van anderen
ik kijk in
mijn eigen spiegel

klompen: slippers met houten zool
klompen: slippers with wooden sole

.

More to read here 

Tekstredactie en vertaling D.Fance Olivieira
Libertas
ISBN 978 99914 7 048 1
145 blz.

Mary’s Song by Sylvia Plath #Wintersolstice #Shoah #Holocaust

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image-4737610Mary’s Song

The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity. . . .A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fireMelting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls floatOver the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die.Grey birds obsess my heart,
Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle.  On the high

Precipice
That emptied one man into space
The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.

It is a heart,
This holocaust I walk in,
O golden child the world will kill and eat.

 

Sylvia Plath
 Photo by Henri van der Beek 
 Buy the Faber Book of 20th Century Women’s Poetry, ed. Fleur Adcock, from an indie bookseller here.

 

 

 

 

Yiddish poetry by Mani Leib and Abraham Reisen!

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“Indian Summer,” by Mani Leib

My Indian Summer, like an offering,
Burns into gold and spirals of smoke.
With brown hand, I push my last
Starry ember through the ash.
Night and villages. On moonlit flutes
The crickets play a breaking music on my heart;
In white grass, by blue-washed pickets,
Gourds are yellow like the moon.
Trees —blue, waxen— in cool space shining.
Like candles, upright: men fearful before God.
Sharp in stillness, the fall of a spent leaf.
Even sharper —the worries in my step.
.
.
And by Abraham Reisen “A Song”

The sweetest melody,
Your heart can sing
Keep for your autumn hour,
Not for the spring.

Glad is the blossom time
With its own tune and chime;
Ah, but the sunset day—
Sing it away.
.
.

From: a Treasury of Yiddish Poetry edited by Irving Howe and Liezer Greenberg.
USED and NEW: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=13535919967 

Black History- poems about your body. Lucille Clifton

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Image

 

Black History Month- poems about your body.

listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
keep it all ways

we have never hated black

listen
we have been ashamed
hopeless tired mad
but always
all ways
we loved us

we have always loved each other
children all ways

pass it on

Lucille Clifton

The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry- grab it now! 5 left between 6 and 15 dollars. The rest is 30 to 60 dollars!

NEW and USED: Abebooks.com The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry
NEW at independent bookstores: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780195125634

Red is the color of a lot of lollipops, Bautiful Land, Nina Simone, Written by Anthony Newley, Leslie Bricusse

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Red is the color of a lot of lollipops,
Orange is any orange on a tree.
Yellow’s the color of a bag of lemon drops,
Green is a piece of seaweed in the sea.

Blue is the color of the sky in summertime
Indigo is a siamese cat’s eyes.
Violet’s the color of a flow’r in wintertime.
These are the colors of the rainbow skies.

There is a beautiful land
Where all your dreams come true;
It’s all tied up in a rainbow,
All shiny and new;
But it’s not easy to find
No matter what you do.

It’s not on top of a mountain
Or beneath the deep blue sea
Or in london zoo or in timbuktoo,
Or in timbuckthree.

And if you travelled the world
From china to peru,
There’s no beautiful land on the chart.
An explorer could not begin
To discover it’s origin
For the beautiful land is in your heart.

Beautiful land by Nina Simone
Written by Anthony Newley, Leslie Bricusse