swallow up these nights.

With their clusters of stars,

swallow up these nights

that remind you of home

and its inky nights

around fires

and the moon

as a woman,

with the small child on her back,

singing . . .

Dzoka haungafe

Dzoka haungatye

Kufa haungafe

Kutya haungatye

Dzoka

Kufa kutya

Dzoka, dzoka-a, dzoka

haungafe,

dzoka haungatye.

Kufa kutya – dzoka-a

In the day, hike this mountain

to find that place to call home

where you can lay your tired bones

& spread them under

the sun

Belinda Zhawi

The Girl Who Fell in Love With the Mountain

I kissed the southern face of a mountain;

his coat scrubbed coarse; smelt of bones

and the iron blood from ruined stone.

The earth moved with me, fell beneath my lips

and I was received into earnest mud;

an ancient epidermis of soft heathers, grass,

and gallant crags enclosing me as his hill-bairn.

I lay immersed, fingering vast feathers

tickling to tender licks, his form; my body-palm

and all the while I rested there

the sunlight streaked my hair with white.

Caroline Hardaker

Translation

We trekked into a far country,

My friend and I.

Our deeper content was never spoken,

But each knew all the other said.

He told me how calm his soul was laid

By the lack of anvil and strife.

‘The working kestrel,’ I said, ‘mutes his mating-note

To please the harmony of this sweet silence.’

And when at the day’s end

We laid tired bodies ’gainst

The loose warm sands,

And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;

When star after star came out

To guard their lovers in oblivion –

My soul so leapt that my evening prayer

Stole my morning song!

Anne Spencer

Furness Abbey

I wish for the days of the olden time,

When the hours were told by the abbey chime,

When the glorious stars looked down through the midnight dim,

Like approving saints on the choir’s sweet hymn:

I think of the days we are living now,

And I sigh for those of the veil and the vow.

I would be content alone to dwell

Where the ivy shut out the sun from my cell,

With the death’s-head at my side, and the missal on my knee,

Praying to that heaven which was opening to me:

Fevered and vain are the days I lead now,

And I sigh for those of the veil and the vow.

Silken broidery no more would I wear,

Nor golden combs in my golden hair;

I wore them but for one, and in vain they were worn;

My robe should be of serge, my crown of the thorn:

’Tis a cold false world we dwell in now,

And I sigh for the days of the veil and the vow.

I would that the cloister’s quiet were mine;

In the silent depths of some holy shrine.

I would tell my blessed beads, and would weep away

From my inmost soul every stain of clay:

My heart’s young hopes they have left me now,