Category: Poetry
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The Fan
The fan is about as old as civilization itself. Sometimes it is said it is “as old as hot weather itself.” Found in the 14th-century BC Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb were eight fans, which in ancient Egypt were called “shuwt” to mean shadow or shade, and “seryt” to mean a royal or military standard. The…
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Roses of the Orient
The Persian poet Sheikh Saadi Shirazi in 1258 wrote The Gulistân, or Rose-Garden, whose leaves, as he said, “cannot be touched by the tyranny of autumnal blasts, and the delights of whose spring the vicissitudes of time will be unable to change into the inconstancy of autumn.” Saadi told how, after spending the night in…
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Dance the Orange
Yonder stands the orange treeShowing off its fruits to me,Gleaming teardrops lovers shedStained by passion’s heartbreak red. Balls of agate carmine-brightHung on boughs of chrysolite,Sent a-spinning from the treesBy the mallet of the breeze. Now I kiss them, now inhale;Thus my senses I regaleWith their cheeks’ so tender bloomAnd the sweets of their perfume.– Ibn…
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Norwegian Wood
Among all of the Beatles’ ballads that I listened to in my youth, Norwegian Wood stood out for its romantic tune and peculiar title. I didn’t understand English as well then, but a read of this song’s lyrics is anything but. As the authors had clarified straightaway, it was about an affair gone awry. As…
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The Birch Tree
At Loschwitz above the cityThe air is sunny and chill;The birch-trees and the pine-treesGrow thick upon the hill. Lone and tall, with silver stem,A birch-tree stands apart;The passionate wind of spring-timeStirs in its leafy heart. I lean against the birch-tree,My arms around it twine;It pulses, and leaps, and quivers,Like a human heart to mine. One…
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Venice
Along the coast of northeastern Italy, where the rivers Brenta, Adige, and Po meet the Adriatic sea, lies Lido, a long sand-bank that forms a bulwark to protect the Lagoon of Venice from fierce storms sweeping often over this turbulent sea. Over thousands of years, sediment brought down from the Alps by these rivers built…
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Winter’s Bone
Considered the greatest Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin is to Russian letters what Leonardo da Vinci is to Western European art. He is regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, the inventor of the modern Russian language, who bridged the gap between the literary Russian of the past and the vernacular. To the Russian people,…
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A Meditation on Death
In the early 19th century, a school of landscape painters, later coined the Hudson River School, flourished alongside the American conservation movement. Influenced by the European Romantic era, the Hudson River School celebrated and idealized nature above that made by man. Founded by the English émigré Thomas Cole in 1825, its beginning was marked by…
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The Moon
While the global calendar in use for official activities is the solar calendar, which keeps track of the Sun’s position relative to the stars, many parts of the world also maintain another calendar, which keeps track of the Moon’s phases. The moon makes a complete orbit around the earth in 28 days, but it takes…
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The Dragonfly
The Brazilian poet Mário Quintana was quoted to have said, “Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” As a gardener, I can say that birds will come as soon as there’s a slightest sighting of fruits, flowers, a water puddle, or even just freshly tilled soil, but it’s…
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