My Time in Hanoi by Sean Singer

Outside the threshold, kneeling full of dust
Hanoi sprouts in the salt. Its leafy barbs
are the lingual equivalency of a vu quang ox
sucking a river. Honey jars & bear
gall bladders hang in a shop window.

A childless couple visits the Perfume Pagoda
to douse their wick. Where the cyclo descends
into the sea, a dragon unfurls her muscular canoe.

Hanoi trades me 11,000 dong if I do a little
monkey dance. At the moment I’m supposed
to twirl & jig-a-jug, a typhoon crashes through
the thatched wall, a seedblown bloodlamp singing:

Em oi / doi khong co em / Nhu pho / khong co nuoc leo:
O my beloved / life without you is like / pho without its broth.

A Cradle Song by William Butler Yeats

The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,
And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,
For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,
With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold:
I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,	5
And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me.
Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea;
Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West;
Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat
The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost;	10
O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host
Is comelier than candles before Maurya’s feet.

Dawn Air by Vicente Huidobro

My soul's above the sea and whistling a dream
Tell the shepherds the wind is saddling its horse
And waving as it leaves in the pride of its youth
I love a woman proud and dreamlike
Silent stepping out from the center
Shepherds know that you should watch me
And watch your dreams and watch your songs
And the dance of the waves
Like the joy of their pride and beauty

Ah sky blue for the queen in the wind
Ah herd of goats and white hair
Lips of praise and red hair
Animals lost in her eyes
Speak to the skeleton combing its hair
From the tip of the earth to the end of the ages
Tunic and scepter
Amplification of memories
Sound of insects and highways
Speak of the land as the ocean flows
Ah the wind
The wind stops for the queen who steps out from her sky

Hidden and Wrinkled by Arthur Rimbaud

Hidden and wrinkled like a budding violet
It breathes, gently worn out, in a tangled vine
(Still damp with love), on the soft incline
Of white buttocks to rim of the pit.

Thin streams like rivers of milk; innocent
Tears, shed beneath hot breath that drives them down
Across small clots of rich soil, reddish brown,
Where they lose themselves in the dark descent...

My mouth always dribbles with its coupling force;
My soul, jealous of the body's intercourse,
Makes it tearful, wild necessity.

Ecstatic olive branch, the flute one blows,
The tube where heavenly praline flows,
Promised Land in sticky femininity.

Exotic Perfume by Charles Baudelaire

When, on an autumn evening, with closed eyes,
I breathe the warm dark fragrance of your breast,
Before me blissful shores unfold, caressed
By dazzling fires from blue Unchanging skies.

And there, upon the calm and drowsing isle,
Grow luscious fruits amid fantastic trees :
There, men are light : the women of those seas
Amaze one with their gaze that knows no guile.

Your perfume wafts me thither like a wind :
I see a harbour thronged with masts and sails
Soil weary from the tumult of the gales;

And with the sailors' song that drifts to me
Are mingled odours of the tamarind,
--And all my soul is scent and melody.

To Atthis by Sappho

Though in Sardis now,
she thinks of us constantly

and of the life we shared.
She saw you as a goddess
and above all your dancing gave her deep joy.

Now she shines among Lydian women like
the rose-fingered moon
rising after sundown, erasing all

stars around her, and pouring light equally
across the salt sea
and over densely flowered fields

lucent under dew. Her light spreads
on roses and tender thyme
and the blooming honey-lotus.

Often while she wanders she remem-
bers you, gentle Atthis,
and desire eats away at her heart

for us to come.

Crow by Shinkichi Takahashi

The crow, spreading wide wings,
Flapped lazily off.
Soon her young will be doing the same,
Firm wings rustling.

It's hard to tell the male
Crow from the female,
But their love, their mating
Must be fresh as their flight.

Asleep in a night train,
I felt my hat fly off.
The crow was lost in mist,
The engine ploughed into the sea.