Dew

A drop of dew.

I see the essence of life

As the world is reflected

In this drop of dew which sits quietly

At the tip of the narrow leaf

Closed upon yourself

You have no doubt about

Your spherical shape

Drop of dew

You split the sunlight

Into seven colours

Of sparkling droplets

Always wary of falling off

But I will not touch you

Transparent as you are

You do not offend my eye.

I will not touch you

Gift given to the poor

Drop of dew

Sweet as the hope to find

The truth of our lives.

A round gap between dream and the real.

Dream within a dream

Memories fading away

Salty tears roll one after the other

But you cannot afford it

You are alone

Allow me to kiss you again

Dew drop

So I will have the strength

to carry on another day

MARIKO SUMIKURA

___________________

Rugiada

Una goccia di rugiada.

Vedo l'essenza della vita

Come il mondo si riflette

In questa goccia di rugiada che sta tranquilla

In punta alla foglia stretta

Chiusa su te stessa

Non hai dubbi sulla

Tua forma sferica

Goccia di rugiada

Tu dividi la luce del sole

In sette colori

Di goccioline scintillanti

Sempre timorosa di cadere

Ma non ti toccherò

Trasparente come sei

Tu non offendi il mio occhio.

Non ti toccherò

Regalo dato ai poveri

Goccia di rugiada

Dolce come la speranza di trovare

La verità della nostra vita.

Divario tra il sogno e il realtà.

Sogno dentro un sogno

Memorie che svaniscono

Lacrime salate rotolano una dopo l'altra

Ma tu non puoi permettertelo

Sei sola

Permettimi di baciarti di nuovo

Goccia  di rugiada

Così avrò la forza di

Proseguire un altro giorno.

 Translated by Lidia Chiarelli

Mariko Sumikura was born, lives and writes in Kyoto. She is the descendant of a very old family with roots in that city going back to medieval times. She studied English Literature at Ritsumeikan University. She also has interests in French Literature and modern Western philosophy.

Mariko Sumikura è nata, vive e scrive a Kyoto. È il discendente da una famiglia molto antica con radici in quella città che risalgono ai tempi medievali. Ha studiato la letteratura inglese presso l'Università di Ritsumeikan. Ha anche degli interessi della letteratura francese e della filosofia occidentale moderna.

Copyright Mariko Sumikura. All rights reserved

Previously published in "This Precious Earth" 

Copyright, January, 2017 by Taro Aizu.

All rights reserved

Digital Collage by Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

______________________

Taro Aizu was born in the Aizu region of Fukushima
prefecture, Japan. He lives in Kanagawa near Tokyo now.
He has been writing haiku for 20 years, gogyoshi for 12
years in Japanese, and both for 5 years in English and
French.  Multi award winning Poet.

Digital Collage by Lidia Chiarelli

Elaine and Neal Whitman live in Pacific Grove, California, where they are inspired by the places and people of the Monterey Peninsula. One place and person is the Manjushri Dharma Center and its Tibetan monk, the Venerable Khempo Karten Rinpoche. His lessons prompt Elaine and Neal to pair her photography and his poetry into a unified vision. 

http://www.larecherche.it/librolibero_ebook.asp?Id=223

eBook n. 217 :: Proust N.7 – Il profumo del tempo, di Aa. Vv.
LaRecherche.it [Un accordo di essenze]

 Free Download

Collana di eBook a cura di Giuliano Brenna e Roberto Maggiani

夜之喚

總是來得濛濛 春之

總是來得遲遲 夏之

總是來得姍姍 秋之

總是來得早早 冬之

這夜呀

可不讓牆頭上的貓

空空地等

________________________________________

Night affair

Always comes misty, Is not that spring?

Always go slowly, Is not that summer?  

Always bring a touch of cool, Is not that autumn?

Always falling so early, Is not that winter?

And that night

Never lets the cats on the wall

wait in vain

______________________________

Un affare notturno

Sempre viene nella nebbia, non è la primavera?

Sempre se ne va lentamente, non è l’ estate?

Sempre porta  un tocco di fresco, non è l'autunno?

Sempre giunge così presto, non è l'inverno?

E la notte

Mai lascia i gatti sul muro

Ad aspettare in vano

(translated by Lidia Chiarelli)

______________________________________

Devil trick

I’m good at digging the hole in your heart

And live in it

From time to time out

I recaptured some of your bad thoughts

Sealed with thin hemp sutures

Pickled as a cold dish to go with the wine

That taste

Full of spicy

Like it

___________________________________

Trucco del diavolo

Sono bravo a scavare un foro nel tuo cuore

E viverci dentro

Di tanto in tanto uscirne

Ho riconquistato alcuni dei tuoi cattivi pensieri

Li ho sigillati con suture di canapa sottile

Li ho messi in  salamoia come piatto freddo che va  con il vino

Quel gusto

Pieno di spezie

Mi piace

(translated by Lidia Chiarelli)

恆

一把六百多年的老材頭

一半劈成碎片

丟入營火之中燃燒

一半磨成紙漿

引誘詩人墨客畫押

身後海浪聲節奏如此分明

抬頭滿天星斗耀眼如初

噯呀

頃刻之間甚麼是永恆

了了已然

________________________________________

Eternity

An old wood for six hundred years

Half split into pieces

Put into burning in campfire

Half is being ground into pulp

Lure the poet leave a signature

The rhythms of waves behind is so clear

Looked up, find the stars dazzling as ever

Yeah

Suddenly, what is eternity?

Completely clear in my mind

_____________________________________________

Eternità

Un vecchio legno di  seicento anni

Fatto in pezzi

Messo a bruciare nel fuoco di un campo di sosta

Metà viene ridotta in polvere

Richiamo per il poeta a lasciare un segno

I ritmi delle onde dietro sono così chiari

Ho guardato in alto, trovo le stelle che abbagliano come sempre

sì

All’improvviso, che cos’ è l’eternità?

E’ completamente chiaro nella mia mente

(Translated by Lidia Chiarelli)

鐘

守舊的方

框住不斷繞行的一生

再怎麼花心思

沒走出

規劃完美的跑道

終究成了個數時間的老頭兒

The Wall Clock

Conservative square space

Framed a lifetime of bypass

How long does it take?

To go out

That perfect runway

I will eventually become an counting-time old man

Orologio  da parete

Uno spazio quadrato che conserva

 Una vita di andare oltre in cornice

Quanto tempo ci vuole?

Per uscire

Da quella pista perfetta

 Diventerò in fine un vecchio uomo che conta il tempo

(translated by Lidia Chiarelli)

小和尚

經文朗朗

聲聲入耳

心惶惶之

木魚

聲聲敲在我浮動的心坎

Little Monk

That reciting scriptures voice

Straight into the ears

Make my heart fearful

Temple Block

Every sound is knocking on my floating heart

Piccolo Monaco

Quella voce recitante scritture

Diritta alle orecchie

Rende il mio cuore timoroso

Percussioni su temple block

Ogni suono bussa sul mio cuore galleggiante

(Traduzione di Lidia Chiarelli)

Poème pour Camille Claudel

 Il y a toujours quelque chose d'absent qui me tourmente
― Camille Claudel

(19 octobre 1943)

Nuages denses

corbeaux invisibles

flottants dans le ciel de la Provence

le vent s’enrage

et ouvre des fissures  bleues

petite fille étonnée

seule, tu écoutes la voix du silence

et regardes les grandes flaques

et l’argile brune

cadeau précieux

que la pluie de la nuit

a apporté

pour la dernière fois

dans une lumière irréelle

de cette boue

des créatures étranges

s’animent

caressées

par ta main tremblante

abandonnée à leur vie

c’est alors qu’un calme inconnu

te saisit

et tu souris

infiniment  libre

en ce matin d’octobre

à Montdesvergues

Lidia Chiarelli, Italie

Opera dal libro "Incontrasi nell'arte" di Totò Mirabile e Gina Bonasera

http://www.ginabonasera.com/

http://www.museomirabilesicilia.it/

BIRD MITZVAH

We rose unto the mountaintop,

to the aerie of the birds,

Tristram’s grackles,

the black, orange-tipped,

and brownish, wide-winged birds

hovering over the sacred site,

flocks swooping and dipping,

whistling, cooing and cawing,

settling here and there on the edge of

the restored walls of ancient rocks.

So curious at the boys with kipas,

and girls with head cloths,

gathered with and without prayer shawls,

speaking in memory of the past,

the 960 who chose death by suicide,

rather than lose their freedom,

to be captured Roman slaves,

and the seven—two women and

five children—who survived,

pardoned, whose descendants

perhaps are among these

bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls.

They recite prayers and famous sayings,

quotes from diaries and other writings,

and then read from the Torah,

each his and her portion,

while mothers and fathers, grandparents,

brothers and sisters and friends surround them

in a harmony of this ceremony of

entering adulthood as Jews.

And the birds continue to swarm

and hover wide-winged on sun winds,

flying back and forth, forth and back,

very, very curiously dipping in and out,

out and in, joining the cantillating and singing

with their whistles and coos and caws,

songs of sad remembrance and joy,

making their own bird mitzvah,

perhaps as spirits of those who battled and died,

here more than a thousand years ago.

—Stanley H. Barkan

Photo by MIA BARKAN-CLARKE

Cross-Cultural Communications Broadside #4

BIRD MITZVAH

We rose unto the mountaintop,

to the aerie of the birds,

Tristram’s grackles,

the black, orange-tipped,

and brownish, wide-winged birds

hovering over the sacred site,

flocks swooping and dipping,

whistling, cooing and cawing,

settling here and there on the edge of

the restored walls of ancient rocks.

So curious at the boys with kipas,

and girls with head cloths,

gathered with and without prayer shawls,

speaking in memory of the past,

the 960 who chose death by suicide,

rather than lose their freedom,

to be captured Roman slaves,

and the seven—two women and

five children—who survived,

pardoned, whose descendants

perhaps are among these

bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls.

They recite prayers and famous sayings,

quotes from diaries and other writings,

and then read from the Torah,

each his and her portion,

while mothers and fathers, grandparents,

brothers and sisters and friends surround them

in a harmony of this ceremony of

entering adulthood as Jews.

And the birds continue to swarm

and hover wide-winged on sun winds,

flying back and forth, forth and back,

very, very curiously dipping in and out,

out and in, joining the cantillating and singing

with their whistles and coos and caws,

songs of sad remembrance and joy,

making their own bird mitzvah,

perhaps as spirits of those who battled and died,

here more than a thousand years ago.

—Stanley H. Barkan

HIKING WITH PETER

        for Peter Thabit Jones, September 17, 2016

Boot-shod feet, born and bred south coast of Wales

felt the pulse of Big Sur’s thumping shore,

tapped its  rhythms into poems,

then leaped, with the help of an airplane,

California to Colorado, where I met him

and was glad he was properly shod

to wind with me up among the sandstone fins

south side of Mt. Sanitas,

hiked and jogged by hundreds,

but sure to be people-free I promised Peter

on our descent north, then west, south,

and east from the summit.

Hour-long uphill huff and puff

failed to deflate our lungs,

left in fact whole hallways and corridors

of oxygen-filled enthusiasm

to talk poetry halfway from A to Z,

saving the other half for the less steep

meander back down.

Peter could pick up from where he left

the Pacific sprawled below his hillside

hermitage at Big Sur by viewing

flat Boulder suckling its own shoreline

steep off Sanitas a thousand feet below our feet.

Peter clicked his camera at whatever wonder

first flew into his eye, a young women clicked us

shaking hands by the mountain’s summit pole,

and shy deer on the way down

ambled in and out of focus,

as poets and the ways of poetry

filled our talk, mixed with the scent

of ponderosa pines, the slope of hillsides,

the grass of  meadows, and a certain log

we had to find to find a certain way down

the rest of the world no longer knows.

Fine friendly trail companion,

this man Peter, for whom poetry

ties and unties his boot laces

talks to him in his sleep, sometimes

shakes him awake, and showed him yesterday

through his boot soles how to step

from Boulder’s young pink sandstone

to its old grey granite in whatever dance

between the two will add

an audible Colorado ripple

to each new poem  

rising up inside him. 

Alex Drummond     America

Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti' poetry by Paolo Lello Gariglio (ASARD), Borgo d'Ale (VC), Italy

acrylic colors 60 x 70

http://sognoarcobalenoarte.xoom.it/

Laugharne, painting by Gianpiero Actis, Italy

"Lawrence for Francesco: a dream", painting by Gianpiero Actis, Italy

__________________________________________________

AN IMAGIST POEM FOR FRANCESCO

The unfortunate sensation

of being hit  by a train

The sound of summer in the rain

A black cat called Nicolino

A house in a wood made of wood

A bird about to catch a fly

A fly about to die

A Magritte cloud

in a cloudless sky

A stream between two houses

A fish about to die of drink

A ship about to sink

A man without a nation

A train about to hit Francesco Conz

in a railway station

And the dark dawn

of American corporate fascism

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

_____________________________________

_______________________________________________________

Credit: Cross-Cultural Communications Art & Poetry Series Broadsides # 77