Prelude no.2 Two truths draw nearer each other. One moves from inside, one moves from outside and where they meet we have a chance to see ourselves. He who notices what is happening cries despairingly: “Stop! Whatever you like, if only I avoid knowing myself.” And there is a boat that wants to put in …

Living with the News Can I get used to it day after day a little at a time while the tide keeps coming in faster the waves get bigger building on each other breaking records this is not the world that I remember then comes the day when I open the box that I remember …

As the trees around Arran are being harvested, Voice reader Elizabeth Ross sent in this poem. Thank you Elizabeth, for sharing your work…  Trees They stood in whispering silence, fifty years tall. When they were born so were my children Who grew with energy, running and shouting, While the trees just stood, quiet, moved only …

The Fired Schoolteacher Three characters of proven banality accost each other with diverse poetical phrases (got a match, I beg of you, what time is it, how many leagues to the next town?), in an indifferent countryside and engage in a conversation whose echoes will never reach us. Before you is the twenty-acre field: I …

Three Epigrams from Chang Ch’ao (17th century)   Flowers must have butterflies, mountains must have streams, rocks must have moss, the ocean must have seaweed, old trees must have creepers, and people must have obsessions. * Only when you can take leisurely what the world is busy about, can you be busy about what the …

My Birthday Present Seventy-nine, seventy-nine, I say it over, and every time it sounds peculiar. Is it a prime? It’s a queer number, seventy-nine. I will enter my eightieth year tomorrow evening somewhere near six o’clock, around dinnertime, my mother told me. That’s a queer hour to be born, or to enter an eightieth year. …