Maram al Masri, Syria
Hanan Awwad, Palestine
Miguel Mendoza Barreto, Venezuela
Bei Dao, China
Ferruccio Brugnaro, Italy
Nicole Cage-Florentini, Martinique
Frances Combes, France
Agneta Falk, USA
Sinan Gudzevic, Serbia/Croatia
Mark Bamuthi Joseph, USA
Anna Lombardo, Italy
Alberto Masala, Sardinia/Italy
Sarah Menefee, USA
Cletus Nelson-Nwadike, Nigeria/Sweden
Sotirios Pastakas
Aharon Shabtai, Israel
Carmen Yanez, Chile/Spain
Sabah M. Jasim, Iraq
and the 4 Poet Laureates of San Francisco:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Janice Mirikitani,devorah major, and Jack Hirschman
Alejandro Murguia, of the USA, who read the poems of Miguel Mendoza Barreto, the Venezuelan poet whose visa was blocked by the US government.
PHOTO/SARAH POWELL
IT'S NOT JUST THE POVERTY
It's not just the poverty It's the abandonment the sorrow in knowing a boy gunned down dying in the arms of his mother without its meaning a thing to anyone without anybody preventing it poverty looks like a dead girl raped by all the insects of this world poverty doesn't go away from my eyes my gaze shakes with its rags and my mouth is torn with its shreds poverty walks and leaves my footprints in its path I can't squash it like a damned mosquito that carries all the wailing of the world in its hate.
BY MIGUEL MENDOZA BARRETO of Marturin, Venezuela. Translated by Jack Hirschman from Spanish, it illustrates how poetry can capture the emotional heart of political struggle.
IT'S TIME FOR THE KNIGHT TO TRIUMPH
In the shade of the olives In the lemon leaves In the eyes of birds I look for you On the summit of the red volcano In the land painted with thyme, O greatest joy of mine, O greatest joy, O home of sorrows, erupt! O home of sorrows, erupt! Shall we worship other gods In the shade of your ashes And hang on the gallows Of your branches? Can we forget That we belong to the pregnant earth? Can we forget that we come from a bigger root? O home of sorrows, erupt! O home of sorrows, erupt! Givara's approaching. The revolution kindles its insurrection. It's ignited by the tawny face, Givara kisses its forehead And perceives unconquerable lions. Gaza, O my mother, O Gaza, The flame of longing grows bright, Grandfather's tent holds a song Made up of the dreams of poverty, Played by grains of light And the sickle. This is my mother, she bears a secret Drawing me toward the yellow sands To love, fragrant in my homeland In a hut on a green mountainside. April! Proclaim that my blood exudes the fragrance Of the land of my ancestors.
HANAN AWWAD of Palestine is an activist for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She translated the poem from Palestinian Arabic.
Aharon Shabtai, fighting working class poet from Israel.
PHOTO/SARAH POWELL
GLORY FOR TALI
If mother Won't send you bananas, Tali Fahima, I will deliver you in a poem Your wings of glory. Because for people who are used to militaristic crap-filled mess-tins You have brought a half a loaf of bread And a glass of milk And for those whose roofs Are being blown off above their heads, Those whose tiles are taken apart From underneath their feet, Those who live under the lynching regime With pocket money you traveled And brought a smile.
AHARON SHABTAI is an award-winning Israeli poet. Translated from Hebrew by Adva E. Levin, it was written to celebrate Tali Fahima, a woman jailed in Israel for associating with Palestinians in Jenin.
STOP THE WAR
Don't wait till it's too late. Don't stay silent, not any more. The missiles the bombs are getting the upper hand on the whole universe on all of life. Monster animals have taken the reins of earth and world. The darkening of the mind and soul is almost total. Don't clam up, don't stay silent. Only war talks strong and loud in these hours spreading blazes of blood and death in city and plain. Don't be silent, don't keep still. The human heart assaulted by the terror of darkness these days like a defenseless child flounders in uttermost weeping.
BY FERRUCCIO BRUGNARO, one of Italy's leading poets, he called the audience to action, urgent and immediate.
