THE MOON
There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Whom the first Adam saw. The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Willis Barnstone
POSTSCRIPT
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
-Seamus Heaney
SLEEP
When all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have–a globe forgot,
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
-Walter de la Mare
IN THE HOUSE A WINDOW
In the house a window
In the window a pot
In the pot a twig
A drowsy woman is knitting booties
Inside her a fish swims without air
But she is content
She smiles as if to her own womb
At shouts in the street
At broken lights
At dark news from the bright box
The woman waits for the inevitable boy
A girl will do as well
-Aigerim Tazhi, (born 1981) Kazakhstan
Translated by J. Kates
Gladsome Lights 