The Pit

Ivan Goran Kovacic (1913–1943)

BLOOD is my daylight, and darkness too.               
Blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks                   
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.               
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed                     
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –               
While my bright eyes died on my own palm.               

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Beauty and the Illiterate

Odysseus Elytis (1911–1996)

Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
                  the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
                  tomorrow foreign.

But, when it darkened well and out came the priest’s hand over
                  the little garden of the dead, She

Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night – the blowing
                  rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns –
                  at sea’s entry, wakeful

Otherly beauty!

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Sonnet VI

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374)

VI

I once beheld on earth celestial graces
And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
Whose memory yields nor joy nor grief alone,
But all things else in cloud and dreams effaces.
I saw how tears had left their weary traces
Within those eyes that once the sun outshone,
I heard those lips, in low and plaintive moan,
Breathe words to stir the mountains from their places.
Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth
Made in their mourning strains more high and dear
Than ever wove soft sounds for mortal ear;
And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth
The very leaves upon the bough to soothe,
Such sweetness filled the blissful atmosphere.

Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1903)

Photo: Courtesy of Annie Spratt / Unsplash

The Red Poppy

Louise Glück 

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.