The Lyricism of Silence

(“Liryka ciszy”)

From the dust of hopelessness, it’s a rising beyond one’s state.

It’s a gift of fate: a seal cast upon human hearts.

When the world falls silent, the heart, in the depths of stillness,

hearkens to the burden of premonitions

and the unwanted word.

That hospitality continues to bear fruit; love stay awake,

as a sleeplessly tide.

Eyelids will never droop

until the nights of doubt sting with pride.

Refracted Mirrors

(“Załamane lustra”)

I know not into what shadows these voices are woven;

the mind celebrates the secret of this otherness.

I stir my imagination to know the truth;

refreshed scenes gleam within this mosaic.

Specks of memory suddenly settle upon my lips;

lapping waves drown out the flow of thought.

Refracted mirrors upon shifting waters’ flow – 

in the web of memory, the purest image takes form.

My Self drifts against the backdrop of infinity low.

Lilacs

(“Bzy”)

Memory stirred

by the fragrance of lilac blooms.

White and lilac-hued blossoms they are a springtime lure.

A hidden flame within the chalices,

a wound upon body and soul.

In their tonalities, they recall both. 

The white ona – a parallel to the first – could, like a stream, 

bring her a state of bliss.

The lilac-hued one – the second – was a murky,

overgrown river bearing the whisper

of sweet flag, the song of clenched hands.

It pulled her down like a whirlpool

and could have pulled her under down again and again.

Or perhaps nothing was quite

as it seemed…

Translated by Olga Smolnytska

Bionote about the translator:

Olga Smolnytska – PhD in Philosophy, Ukrainian scientific and culture activist, scholar, translator, writer, literature critic, artist.

Aleksandra Sołtysiak (Poland), graduate of the Catholic University of Lublin and Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She has served as coeditor of the poetry anthology Dotyk nadzie (The Touch of Hope), which was translated into Ukrainian and German, as well as of the international anthology in support of world peace The tree of peace turns green / European poetry for universal harmony, which has been translated into Polish and English. She’s also the author of Hope blossoms longer and the published poetry volume „Spilled from the cases”. Finalist in the fourth International Poetry Contest, „Voices in the Wilderness” held in Rome (2022). She publishes nationally and internationally. She has also been awarded the Gold Cross of Merit by Polish president Andrzej Duda. In 2023 distinguished with a medal for Merit to Polish Culture.

MY DAY STARTS ONLY WITH YOU!

If your absence is neither gain nor loss

Don’t know why it bothers me then

My day starts only with your thoughts 

My crimson evening comes from you

Every moment I breath in is called life

Your blue eyes and tender arms in mine

Nothing but you rule in me all the time

Your words are my words you do know

My dreamy nights are but your gifts

Strange all of me has become yours

I want to be loyal till my last breath 

The unbreakable thread has bound us 

Even on separating it doesn’t separate

Even on breaking it does never break.

EVEN IF I DIE!

Days and nights your memories visit

They do torture my anguished heart 

Meeting and separation are norms now

I am all hopeless in your crazy thoughts

For the world the heart is a puppet

I can well imagine how it does feel to be

Please don’t look at me so intensely 

Promise me if I die you won’t forget me 

You always reside in the corner of my eyes

Yet you exist somewhere far away from me

You are so close to my heart I believe!!

 MY HOPELESS HEART!

My heart full of love is incurable 

It’s hard to explain its passions

With its hobby to live and die

My hopeless heart is all thirsty 

Of poison all the while; walking

On embers is its hoary practice 

Still tempted to wounds and pains

Causing sorrow and loneliness 

Splendour of love and disgrace 

Am never ever sure of its mood

My passionate heart is incurable.

 SHE WAS LOST IN MY THOUGHTS!

Even that evening was unusual 

So close she was as she is now

Her evocative eyes were enticing 

A red rose was betraying my self

In the myriad mirth blushingly

She was busy humming my name

To me she was smiling gracefully 

Her eyes concealed all the desires

Behind her was a blooming smile

Lost in my thoughts in toto then

I think she ‘ll come to me one day.

©️®️Dr Prasana Kumar Dalai

#India

OUR STAR CHAMBER: RACK AND EXTRACTION

“And now,” says my torturer,

it’s time for your manicure.”

I strapped you to my machine

that moves belows to above.

“By means of proper stretching

I’ll teach you to loosen up.”

My fingernails, your pliers,

my distorted solo choir.

KINGSTON

8 DaYS! 7 NIGHTS!

Son, dey

moan

day to day

when dey

thirsty.

Fried, dey

sat ern de sun.

Deh!

 SPI(RITUAL)

marriage is a ritual,

agreed universality

of rote, script, symbol, image,

repetitive activities,

(temple, ring, song, robes, candles)

sameness within variety,

recitation from a page

Blood marks up the invisible.

love is the spiritual

ungloved particularity,

a simple cherished mirage

that completes our I-dentities.

THE ID ENTITY

There is a Trinity, some say, within each soul.

Even so, only one

of them is in control.

JUST A MOMENT

That night we togethered.

Our snowball moon may melt

amid its blizzard of stars,

but our being

at that there,

at that then,

and at that thus

was that moment

that will never move

into the being

that we had 

not yet been,

those plants 

and stones

to come,

the selves surrendered,

the selves sundered,

variously victors or victims,

deluges of confusion

among pussie,

tits,

and asses,

the tomorrows

of betrothals and betrayals

of other Peters, other cocks,

and the knowledge known

but could change nothing.

I do lust after gold, jewels, and such, shiny things. I am shamelessly bold, and I want shiny things because they are shiny. And I deserve honors, distinctions, high titles. I crave folds of fawners, many affairs, sweet flings meaningless as candy but rich in imaginings that appease variety. I burn with impatience and rely on cunning, grasping will to hasten the end of the burning. And I want what I want — any passing fancy — and of course I must flaunt that uproooted pansy. And I rationalize injustice in my dreams, and I invoke conscience to accomplish my schemes; it reminds me of rules I use to maneuver sure-footed among fools who forsake their Mover.

There is a minister

of reason, one who schemes

and justifies. And one

jester/councilor seems

to advise moral sense.

The Tyrant Child is king!

And this despot’s desires rule over everything.

You Save Me

Sadness arrives like a stone mist, heavy and mute, over the paths of my vision; each step is a knot that ties itself around my legs, and the world shrinks to the size of a trapped sigh.

Grief is a dry riverbed where I walk barefoot, treading on the bones of what once was, and the sun becomes a broken mirror that reflects nothing but shadows of shadows. My breath is a thin thread that breaks every time I try to name what is lost.

But you are the lighthouse made of hands, that shines not with light but with warmth; you pierce my landscape like a tree that grows inward, its roots weaving bridges over the abysses that my feet open.

You are the silence that knows how to speak, the space that opens up in the midst of my anguish; you lift me up as the sea lifts what the wind has dragged to the shore, putting my broken pieces back in place as if they were mosaic. You transform my dust into earth where something can still grow.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.

Mother tongue

You lie
You cheat

There are maps
of open sores on your face that refuse to heal
They’re as red as an ambulance

They’re like a pot of rice
left too long on the stove
that threatens to boil over

And then boils over
Your wounds, brother, have become my own
I encourage you

I pray for you
Still, it is not enough

I don’t know what you want from me
What do you want me to do for you?

There are days and nights, hours 
that I just can’t cope

I just lie there 
in the dark, staring at the ceiling

I wear the light like a mask
God is my constant companion

You steal
You curse

You smoke 
like a house on fire

And turn the muscles of your lungs 
into two orange flames

that dissolves into blackness
in the sea of your chest

That is your mother tongue
The language of addiction

Your crime?
In the sprawling desert of your hands

In the tragedy of your yellow fingers
your slender frame

I search your face
for the signs of addiction

Marijuana
Tik

All I find 
are signs of addiction

Instead, I find 
your children, walking in your shadow

Two miracles
Two candles

Two burning effigies
like lanterns in the dark

Guiding you, guiding you
It shouldn’t be a teenager’s responsibility, but it is

Your daughter, a rose
Your son, a giant

I think, their love isn’t enough
It isn’t enough to save you

The moon 
witnesses my despair

It also witnesses 
your own hardship

I thought by now that you’d change
There you are 

in the study rolling a joint
The rose standing next to you

Watching you
She is watching you

She is studying your every move
The giant discovers your drug paraphernalia

He continues to play computer games
So, now I pray for them

That a rose will always be a rose
That a giant will always be a giant

That they will be concerned
for the welfare of the children 

that they will have one day
That they will be the sun and the moon

in their children’s lives
And I pray

That they won’t 
resort to keeping

drugs 
and drug paraphernalia 

in full view 
of their children

I cry everyday, because of you
because of you

Sometimes I look at the rose
and I cry some more

I hide my tears in the garden
in cups of coffee

I want to be brave
like Linda, Charles Bukowski’s wife

I want to be brave
like Charles Bukowski


and Anderson Cooper
who lost a brother and a father

I am only a sister
who doesn’t know who she must blame

I don’t know how to get you 
out of this situation

I don’t know 
how to save you

I don’t know 
how to save the rose, the giant

These hands are ineffectual
And so, I pray.

It was during autumn

It was during autumn

When leaves like to fall

But I was wondering 

How to rise and soar 

Bright colours spread 

It was celebration

Of death.

How can rebirth 

Become possible 

Without tasting the coffin?

Decay, loss and annihilation

Autumn held them all

But hope never left 

My heart

Under the naked trees

I stood and

was hell bent to 

see the flowers 

bloom 

Despair smiled

And hummed 

with the migrating birds.

They promised to return

And I knew 

I would wait.

The whirling leaves 

reminded me of

the sacred circumambulation.

Was it necessary to surrender 

To that force

And go into the wind?

I was restless 

On the brink of

A new knowledge.

Then came stillness 

And I was lost,

Engulfed by a new

Kind of numbness.

I felt like waiting

And filling 

Nothingness’s call.

But I was

And knew

I was the vessel

Preparing 

To hold 

Love.

I dwelled in

Namelessness

But I had become 

The Ocean 

And I could 

Not see the drop

I used to be…

Shah Jehan Ashrafi

Free!

by Jacques Fleury

[Excerpt from Fleury’s Boston Globe featured poetry book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir 

archived permanently at the University of Massachusetts’s Healy Research Library]

Dock
we’ll dock stones
roll and
we’ll unroll
in my America
the big flying eagle
birds well done abroad.
two groups of people
the rich and the poor
the young and the old
the white and the black
and three tons of fat
all in procession
silent tales are blooming
flowers growing shells
olive branches
climbing white house walls
two candles burning
shades of gray
I trust in god
holy bloody sunday comes
sunday morning
god bless those whose veins
bear none
twilight swallows the moon
darkness
descends
soldiers gone AWOL
run like panthers
here and gone
they’ve staged a snare
running rivers very dry mouths
Dutiful soldiers beat their drums
paragons of strength and honor
masquerade balls
dinky shoots smack and
the dumb blond flunks
fall down stand up
walk the line
walk backwards
juggling well
will set you free!

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured and internationally published Haitian American poet, theater reviewer, educator, author of numerous books of essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and literary arts student through Harvard University. He was chosen among over 4, 000 competitors from 83 countries as the Recipient of the International Naji Naaman Literary Prize for Creativity (2026) and a Certificate of Participation for his “…esteemed contribution of poetry to the anthology Water: The Source of Life (Volume IV) presented by La Fenetre De Paris.