Poem

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England ! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

‘Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time : for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Ainong thy mountains did I feel
 The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.

Prayers of steel
Carl Sandburg

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue
nights into white stars.

Peter at fourteen
Constance Carrier

What do you care for Caesar, who yourself are
in three parts divided, and must find,
past daydream and rebellion and bravado,
the final shape and substance of your mind ?

What are the Belgae, the Helvetii,
to you? I doubt that you will read in them
metaphor of your stand against dominion,
or see as yours their desperate stratagem.

They found their tribal rank, their feuds, their freedom,
obliterated, lost beyond return.
It took them years to see that law and order
could teach them things that they might care to learn.

As fiercely individual, as violent
as they, you clutch your values and your views,
fearful that self may not survive absorption.
(Who said to learn at first is like to lose?)

Not courage, no, but nature will betray you.
You will stop fighting, finally, and your pride,
that fed so long upon your independence,
flourish on what convention can provide,

till you may grow more Roman than the
Romans, contemptuous of pagan broils and brawls,
and even, mastering your mentors’ knowledge,
 go on to build cathedrals, like the Gauls.

Haiku
Ashraful Musaddeq

Powerless
sunshine is smiling
laughing breeze chilly tranquil
 powerless the room

Process
now weeding out
intercultural process
fresh cool oxygen

Program
looking for program
over flooded memories
thinning and cleaning

Purple
all on a sudden
love blooms as orchid flower
purple desire

Python
listening sound
status eater python next
weekend melody

Reality
moon has dark area
we have shadowy area
lunar reality

Recall
pollen of worship
distributing fragrances
return of recall

The ocean at midnight
Shamsul Alam Belal

When the ocean is in sleep,
Its bosom begins to weep
Like the weary breath of a flute
Or, the widow’s weeping mute.
Mother of streams and fountains,
Reliever of distress and all pains,
The ocean also demands its due
From the nature, it is not untrue.