Above the crumbled bricks 
a butterfly, its heart attached 
here to the slums 

Factory dismissing the workers-- 
it vomits cloudy autumn water 
into the canal

After a heated argument 
I go out into the street 
and become a motorcycle.

Winter Living

Snow has fallen on snow 
the truly light, the bright 
falling in the backyard, 
on the wall. 
I passed this winter, 
chewing crumbs of barley bread, 
catching snow like crushed gains. 
This snow must be 
the last snow of winter. 
There is nothing one could do 
except to find reconciliation 
in something like this 
on an occasion like this, 
in this place under clouds-- 
My winter living 
sustained by chewing crumbs 
and catching snow grains in two hands. 
In this land under clouds, 
there is nothing could do 
except to find reconciliation 
in such a way as this. 
Chewing in my two hands 
the truly light, the bright. 

Translated from the Korean by Uchang Kim 
 

by arundhati subramaniam (India, English)

I've never quite understood 
your plumbing -- 
what rumbling cistern feeds 
your self-containment; 
what tortuous whorl of drains 
siphons off the blood 
that must surely rise, restless, 
behind your closed lids at night; 
how you tame those torrents 
of windswept anarchy into 
the ebb tides that swim 
with muddy images 
in your eyes. 

And it still remains 
a mystery to me, 
how you allowed a fragile buddle 
of treacherous technicolour hope 
to burst 
into the flaming hullabaloo 
of yet another file, deciding 
terrifyingly to forgo forever 
the option to despair. 

Awakening 

You woke up. 
Where are you? 
You're still 
not used to waking up 
in your own house. 
This kis the kind of daze 
thirteen years of prison leaves you in. 
Who's sleeping next to you? 
It's not loneliness--it's your wife. 
She is sleeping peacefully, like an agel. 
Pregnancy becomes the lady. 
What time it is? 
Eight. 
You're safe till night. 
Because it's the custom: 
the police don't raid houses in braod daylight. 

by: Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh)
 
 
 

             In the market nothing can be had as cheap as women. 

              If they get a small bottle of alta for their feet 
              they spend three nights sleepless for sheer joy. 

             If they get a few bars of soap to scrub their skin 
                     and some scented oil for their hair 
                they become so submissive that they scoop out 
                            chunks of their flesh 
                 to be sold in the flea market twice a week. 

                     If they get a jewel for their nose 
                   they lick feet for seventy days or so, 
                       a full three and a half months 
                       if it's a single striped sari. 

             Even the mangy cur of the house barks now and then, 
                  and over the mouths of women cheaply had 
                               there's a lock 
                               a golden lock. 

Anasuya Sengupta is a senior at Lady Sri Ram College in New Delhi. She sent this poem to 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who made it the centerpiece of her speech in India. 
 

        Too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence. 
                My grandmother was always silent - always aggrieved 
     - only her husband had the cosmic right (or so it was said) to speak and be heard. 

                           They say it is different now 
         (after all, I am always vocal and my grandmother thinks I talk too much). 
                            But sometimes, I wonder. 

          When a woman gives her love, as most do generously - it is accepted. 

     When a woman shares her thoughts, as some women do, graciously - it is allowed. 

       When a woman fights for power, as all women would like to, quietly or loudly, 
                                it is questioned. 

                 And yet, there must be freedom - if we are to speak. 
                 And yes, there must be power - if we are to be heard. 
        And when we have both (freedom and power), let us not be misunderstood. 

                We seek only to give words to those who cannot speak 
                     (too many women in too many countries). 
             I seek only to forget the sorrows of my grandmother's silence. 
 

                             Rabindranath Tagore 

     Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 
     Where knowledge is free 
     Where the world has not been broken up into fragments 
     By narrow domestic walls 
     Where words come out from the depth of truth 
     Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection 
     Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way 
     Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit 
     Where the mind is led forward by thee 
     Into ever-widening thought and action 
     Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake 
 

from Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali 
 

 FIREFLIES
          by  Rabindranath Tagore 

 I touch God in my song 
   as the hill touches the far-away sea 
      with its waterfall. 
 

 The butterfly counts not months but moments, 
    and has time enough. 
 

 Let my love, like sunlight, surround you 
    and yet give you illumined freedom. 
 

 Love remains a secret even when spoken, 
    for only a lover truly knows that he is loved. 
 

 Emancipation from the bondage of the soil 
    is no freedom for the tree. 
 

 In love i pay my endless debt to thee 
      for what thou art. 

by Bei Dao (born 1949, China) 

The scoundrel carries his baseness around like an ID card. 
The honest man bears his honor like an epigraph. 
Look--the gilded sku is swimming 
with undulent reflections of the dead. 

They say the ice age ended years ago. 
Why are there icicles everywhere? 
The Cape of Good Hope has already been found. 
Why should all those sails contend on the Dead Sea? 

I came into this world with nothing 
but paper, rope, and shadow. 
Now, I come to be judged, 
and I've nothing to say but this: 

Listen. I don't believe!
OK. You've trampled 
a thousand enemies underfoot. Call me 
a thousand and one. 

I don't believe the sky is blue. 
I don't believe what the thunder says. 
I don't beliebe dreams aren't real, 
that beyond death there is no reprisal. 

If the sea should break through the sea-wall, 
let its brackish water fill my heart. 
If the land should rise from the sea again, 
we'll choose again to live in the heights. 

The earth revolves. A glittering constellation 
pricks the vast defenseless sky. 
Can you see it there? that ancient ideogram-- 
the eye of the future gazing back. 

Translated from the Chinese by Donald Finkel 
with Chen Xueliang 
 

     After long summer months, 
     the June rain, trying hard 
     to give darkness and light an organic unity. 
     The odour of a raped woman through the wetness, 
     sacked and consigned to the poison in her blood, 
     And the irrelevance 
     of people walking past in silence, 
     the crows laconic, 
     the rotting mangoes black with flies, 
     the newspaper carving the Establishment's lies. 
     What things are these, 
     that have the strength to punish one? 
     Or to pay homage to a life? 
     The air is damp and heavy with the perfume of henna. 
     There are so many things 
     that die as they are, without suffering. 
     In my country of unenforced laws, 
     I write my futile poem, eat the fish 
     I buy from the local market, listen intelligently 
     to discussions on parliament elections, 
     and look at the lost bit of land in my old, soiled atlas. 
     At times I could say I was fighting for justice. 
     Sometimes, these days, 
     when the light plays on the window-panes, 
     I think of the big flocks of starlings I saw in Europe, 
     wheeling and turning as if there was one brain among them, 
     and see that vague benevolence of mine 
     that means little more than an unwillingness 
     to say those words that the tragedy of chaos demands. 

     Sahitya Akademi Award winner Jayanta Mahapatra was born in Cuttack in 1928 and
      educated locally and at the Science College,Patna. For 36 years he worked as a
     Physics teacher in different colleges in Orissa and is now retired.

Her dream, like the dream of a dozen women. 
A full plate, deliciously full, 
Places to go, things to do, morning and evening. 
Neatly ironed clothes. A nicely furnished home. 
sometimes a play, sometimes a cocert--with the best seats. 
All the happiness in the world on a meager income. 
Laughter and teasing. Talk and chatter. 
Her dream, like the dream of a dozen other women. 

But she woke up before the dream began. 
And then she never fell asleep again. 

Translated from the Marathi by Vinay Dharwadker

Madness is a country 
Just around the corner 
Whose shores are never lit 
But if you go there 
Ferried by despair 
The sentries would ask you to strip 
At first the clothes, then the flesh 
and later of course your bones. 
Their only rule is freedom 
Why, they even eat bits of your soul 
When in hunger, 
But when you reach that shore 
That unite shore 
Do not return, please do not return. 

The Earth is closing on us
pushing us through the last passage
and we tear off our limbs to pass through.
The Earth is squeezing us.
I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again.
I wish the Earth was our mother
so she'd be kind to us.

I wish we were pictures on the rocks
for our dreams to carry as mirrors.
We saw the faces of those who will throw
our children out of the window of this last space.
Our star will hang up mirrors.
Where should we go after the last frontiers ?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky ?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air ?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.