Literature 2: World Literature

Welcome to this site. This is a sneak preview of how world literature is like. Hopefully, you would find this site helpful and relevant to your class and development as an individual.

Haikus

Basho

The sea darkens.
The voices of the wild ducks
turn white.

----------------------

Winter seclusion:
once again I lean
against this post.

----------------------

Issa

Cherry blossoms in evening.
Ah well, today also
belongs to the past.

---------------------

The older we get,
the more easily tears come
on a long day.

--------------------
these poems are not Haikus..
they are poems written by Izumi Shikibu
They will be included in our discussion

Shikibu

near nonexistent
I would have you beside me
now if only once
to have the memory live
as I go off from the world

--------------

Things I Want Decided

Which should not exist in this world,
the one who forgets,
or the one who is forgotten?

Which is better,
to love one who has died,
or not to see each other when you are alive?

Which is better,
the distant lover you long for
or the one you see daily without desire?

Which is the least unreliable
among fickle things--
the swift rapids,
a flowing river,
or this human world?

Thoughts of Hanoi by Nguyen Thi Vinh

taken from this website

The night is deep and chill
as in early autumn. Pitchblack,
it thickens after each lightning flash.
I dream of Hanoi:

Co-ngu Road ten years of separation
the way back sliced by a frontier of hatred
I want to bury the past
to bum the future
to still I yean
still I fear
those endless nights
waiting for dawn.

Brother,
how is Hang Dao now?
How is Ngoc Son temple?
Do the trains still run
each day from Hanoi
to the neighboring towns?
To Bac-ninh, Cam-giang, Yen-bai,
the small villages, islands
of brown thatch in a lush green sea?
The girls
bright eyes
ruddy cheeks
four-piece dresses
raven-bill scarves'
sowing harvesting
spinning weaving
all year round,
the boys
plowing
transplanting
in the fields
in their shops
running across
the meadow at evening
to fly kites
and sing alternating songs.'

Stainless blue sky,
jubilant voices of children
stumbling through the alphabet,
village graybeards strolling to the temple,
grandmothers basking in twilight sun,
chewing betel leaves'
while the children run-
Brother,
how is all that now?
Or is it obsolete?
Are you like me,
reliving the past,
imagining the future?
Do you count me as a friend
or am I the enemy in your eyes?
Brother, I am afraid
that one day I'll be with the March-North Army'
meeting you on your way to the South.
I might be the one to shoot you then
or you me
but please
not with hatred.

For don't you remember how it was,
you and I in school together,
plotting our lives together?
Those roots go deep!

Brother, we are men,
conscious of more
than material needs.
How can this happen to us
my friend
my foe?

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

There Will Come Soft Rain by Sara Teasedale

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.