VI


For, after the gospels,
After the human and divine comedies,
After the one thousand and one nights,
After crime and punishment,
War and peace, pride and prejudice,
The sound and the fury,
Between good and evil,
Being and nothingness,
After the tempest, the trial,
And the wasteland,
After things have fallen apart,
After one hundred years of solitude,
And remembrance of things past,
In the kingdom of this world,
We can still astonish the gods in humanity
And be the stuff of future legends,
If we but dare to be real,
And have the courage to see
That this is the time to dream
The best dream of them all.



-- from Ben Okri's Mental Flight

FROM SILENCE
by Debjani Chatterjee



"Speech is...but silence is golden."
"Little girls should be seen, not heard."
What bully shut our silver mouths?
("In the beginning was the Word".)

Silence is ripening yearning,
listening. Let my silence grow -
silence to nurture thoughtful speech.
From silence may my language flow.



-

CALLING AT AN OLD FRIEND'S FARM
- Meng-Hao-jan (A.D. 689-740)


My old friend cooked chicken and millet,
invited me home to his farm.
Green hills grow around the edge of his village.
Green hills slope away from its walls.
We dined looking out at his vegetable garden,
took wine, talking of hemp and mulberry.
I'll wait till the day of Double Ninth,
then come again for chrysanthemum flowers.



(trans.by Richard Burton)