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Guard your Heart Carefully

Mayy Ziyada
1922
Egypt (Original Language: Arabic)

Slowly the twilight lowered its curtain over earth, cloud-margins bordered, patched and yoked with threads of gold and silver. Mirrored in the bowers of sunset, tiny lake-images of ruby and pools of emerald faded, and a gloomy morose melancholy settled on the earth. Dejection settled over your eyes. Inside you what sun sets, O young …

Poems and Letters

Ziya Gökalp
1918
Turkey (Original Language: Turkish)

POEMS (1918)   Language For us Turkish is a beautiful tongue, Another tongue, is like night to us. Istanbul speech is The purest, most refined for us.   In language the word everyone knows Is considered genuine The word whose meaning can be understood Without a glance at the dictionary.   We don’t invent artificial …

With Pure Virtue’s Hand

‘A’isha Taymur
1894
Egypt (Original Language: Arabic)

With pure virtue’s hand I guard the might of my hijāb and with faultless self-shielding, among my peers I rise With my thoughts taking fire and my gift for sharp critique I have brought my poet’s skills to new and perfect highs I composed poetry expressing an assemblage: before me, women sheltered, most noble, esteemed, …

Tazkirat al-Ahwal

٘Muhammad Ali ‘Hazin’ Lahiji
1742
Isfahan (Original Language: Persian)

[From Hazin’s days of study as a young man] During those days [in Isfahan], of all the strange occurrences and events, there was the passion for a beauty [with such] manner of beautiful qualities, that my heart became maddened. You showed me a trace of the beauty of the friend but / Should this world …

160 Kafis

Piro
Punjab (Original Language: Panjabi)

  KAFIS 14-31 Turaks[1] (I)[2] left have come wheedling, they who stay aggrieved[3] Scared they don’t come near (you), they roam about in discord Piro (says) in guru’s court power of none will matter What shall (I) say of others, even kings stutter Petrified they (Turaks) come and cry before the guru Wearing their scarves …