On this they were in agreement:
everything that can happen between two people
happens after a while

or has been thought about so hard
there's almost no difference
between desire and deed.

Each day they stayed together, therefore,
was a day of forgiveness, tacit,
no reason to say the words.

It was easy to forgive, so much harder
to be forgiven. The forgiven had to agree
to eat dust in the house of the noble

and both knew this couldn't go on for long.
The forgiven would need to rise;
the forgiver need to remember the cruelty

in being correct.
Which is why, except in crises,
they spoke about the garden,

what happened at work,
the little ailments and aches
their familiar bodies separately felt.

~ from New and Selected Poems 1974-1994 (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1994)

is turning me off. so i take a walk.
plums fall from trees and protest 
& i can’t see the colour green 
anymore & just last night yo  
just last night god went SPLAT 
on my window like a fluttery lick
spittle & told me all love starts 
in a garden. what am i supposed to do
with that?  another friend goes. gone 
enough. almost never here. those facetimes
inside me out all year, wishing I could see you
in the hospital.  life breaks who doesn’t cry
eventually. one more grave in the middle
of all that green. prayers tangle in my pockets 
like earphone wire. i think about the best way
to maneuver my mask & eat, then give up.
i think about the best way to sneak 
into the hospital.  what about the body 
& everything it can’t keep? i’m so over
the garden. i stood at its knee, dressed in 
leaves, begging for fruit. learned the only 
predator in paradise is me. no eating or being eaten.
bony limbs, broken lungs & growing more 
unknown.

~ from Ploughshares, Vol 48, Number 1, Spring 2022

tThen in the writers’ wood, every bird with a name in the world crowded the leafless trees took its turn to whistle or croak. An owl grieved in an oak. A magpie mocked. A rook cursed from a sycamore. The cormorant spoke: Stinking seas below ill winds. Nothing swims. A vast plastic soup, thousand miles wide as long, of petroleum crap. A bird of paradise wept in a willow. The jewel of a hummingbird shrilled on the air. A stork shawled itself like a widow. The gull said: Where coral was red, now white, dead under stunned waters. The language of fish cut out at the root. Mute oceans. Oil like a gag on the Gulf of Mexico... A woodpecker heckled. A vulture picked at its own breast. Thrice from the cockerel, as ever. The macaw squawked: Nouns I know– Rain. Forest. Fire. Ash. Chainsaw. Cattle. Cocaine. Cash. Squatters. Ranchers. Loggers. Looters. Barons. Shooters. A hawk swore. A nightingale opened its throat in a garbled quote. A worm turned in the blackbird’s beak. This from the crane: What I saw – slow thaw in permafrost broken terrain of mud and lakes peat broth seepage melt methane breath. A bat hung like a suicide. Only a rasp of wings from the raven. A heron was stone a robin blood in the written wood. So snow and darkness slowly fell the eagle, history, in silhouette, with the golden plover, and the albatross telling of Arctic ice as the cold, hard moon calved from the earth. ~ from Earth Prayers, Encounters in Poetry with the Natural World (Picador, 2024)

translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.

Ready to help,
as long as it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it’s better not to know
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.              

~from Miracle Fair (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002)

That you were born
and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

That you will lie
if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose

That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.

That you will live
that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.           

So you might as well live    
and you might as well love.      
You might as well love.     
You might as well love.

~ From Sorry For Your Troubles (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2013)

I wonder,
Will it all click into place?
I feel it might.
I had a glimpse
That things could all come right.
I'd wake up
On a sunny, slightly roostered morn
And wouldn't realise at first;
The rightness would take time to dawn.
And gradually
the thing would start to gleam;
This worried life I'd had,
This awful world, this painful mess –
It was, in fact, a kind of dream.
The penny would just drop
Into my hand,
The penny that I'd lost so long ago,
And all the peace withheld and blocked from me
Would start to flow.
The gentle hum, the gold and silver light
Would all resume;
The fairies and the pixies,
The particles of dust
Caught in the sunlight in my room.
I'd pick up
Where I'd been so rudely interrupted;
I'd have it back again for keeps,
My dog, my brilliant grasp of life,
My backyard and my paddocks full of time,
The world all glad around me,
My rightful place,
My joyous leaps.

~ from Poems 1972-2002, Melbourne, Penguin (Viking) 2003

I wonder,
Will it all click into place?
I feel it might.
I had a glimpse
That things could all come right.
I'd wake up
On a sunny, slightly roostered morn
And wouldn't realise at first;
The rightness would take time to dawn.
And gradually
the thing would start to gleam;
This worried life I'd had,
This awful world, this painful mess –
It was, in fact, a kind of dream.
The penny would just drop
Into my hand,
The penny that I'd lost so long ago,
And all the peace withheld and blocked from me
Would start to flow.
The gentle hum, the gold and silver light
Would all resume;
The fairies and the pixies,
The particles of dust
Caught in the sunlight in my room.
I'd pick up
Where I'd been so rudely interrupted;
I'd have it back again for keeps,
My dog, my brilliant grasp of life,
My backyard and my paddocks full of time,
The world all glad around me,
My rightful place,
My joyous leaps.

~ from Poems 1972-2002, Melbourne, Penguin (Viking) 2003

I wonder,
Will it all click into place?
I feel it might.
I had a glimpse
That things could all come right.
I'd wake up
On a sunny, slightly roostered morn
And wouldn't realise at first;
The rightness would take time to dawn.
And gradually
the thing would start to gleam;
This worried life I'd had,
This awful world, this painful mess –
It was, in fact, a kind of dream.
The penny would just drop
Into my hand,
The penny that I'd lost so long ago,
And all the peace withheld and blocked from me
Would start to flow.
The gentle hum, the gold and silver light
Would all resume;
The fairies and the pixies,
The particles of dust
Caught in the sunlight in my room.
I'd pick up
Where I'd been so rudely interrupted;
I'd have it back again for keeps,
My dog, my brilliant grasp of life,
My backyard and my paddocks full of time,
The world all glad around me,
My rightful place,
My joyous leaps.

~ from Poems 1972-2002, Melbourne, Penguin (Viking) 2003

I wonder,
Will it all click into place?
I feel it might.
I had a glimpse
That things could all come right.
I'd wake up
On a sunny, slightly roostered morn
And wouldn't realise at first;
The rightness would take time to dawn.
And gradually
the thing would start to gleam;
This worried life I'd had,
This awful world, this painful mess –
It was, in fact, a kind of dream.
The penny would just drop
Into my hand,
The penny that I'd lost so long ago,
And all the peace withheld and blocked from me
Would start to flow.
The gentle hum, the gold and silver light
Would all resume;
The fairies and the pixies,
The particles of dust
Caught in the sunlight in my room.
I'd pick up
Where I'd been so rudely interrupted;
I'd have it back again for keeps,
My dog, my brilliant grasp of life,
My backyard and my paddocks full of time,
The world all glad around me,
My rightful place,
My joyous leaps.

~ from Poems 1972-2002, Melbourne, Penguin (Viking) 2003

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other. 

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it. 

~ from The October Palace  (HarperCollins, 1994)

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other. 

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it. 

~ from The October Palace  (HarperCollins, 1994)

If we could pray. If 
we could say we have come here 
together, to grow into a tree, 
if we could see our blue hands  
holding up the moon, and hear 
how small the sound is 
when it slips through  
our fingers into water, 
when the meaning of words melts
away and sugarcane speaks
in fields more clearly
than our tongues,
when a child takes 
a stick as long as itself 

and rolls a wheel
down a lane on wings of dust,
in control, would we 
think then that we should thank
someone? If we knew
we could turn, and turning
feel that things could be different.
But we are unused 
to gratitude, if we could lose 
our pride, bend down
look for peace on the iron
ground. If we could

kneel.

~ from The Terrorist At My Table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

Syrian doves croon above my head
their call cries in my eyes.
I’m trying to design a country
that will go with my poetry
and not get in the way when I’m thinking,
where soldiers don’t walk over my face.
I’m trying to design a country
which will be worthy of me if I’m ever a poet
and make allowances if I burst into tears.
I’m trying to design a City
of Love, Peace, Concord and Virtue,
free of mess, war, wreckage and misery.

Oh Syria, my love
I hear your moaning
in the cries of the doves.
I hear your screaming cry.
I left your land and merciful soil
And your fragrance of jasmine
My wing is broken like your wing.

I am from Syria
From a land where people pick up a discarded piece of bread
So that it does not get trampled on
From a place where a mother teaches her son not to step on an ant at the end of the day.
From a place where a teenager hides his cigarette from his old brother out of respect.
From a place where old ladies would water jasmine trees at dawn.
From the neighbours’ coffee in the morning
From: after you, aunt; as you wish, uncle; with pleasure, sister…
From a place which endured, which waited, which is still waiting for relief.

Syria.
I will not write poetry for anyone else.

Can anyone teach me
how to make a homeland?
Heartfelt thanks if you can,
heartiest thanks,
from the house-sparrows,
the apple-trees of Syria,
and yours very sincerely.

They don’t publish

the good news.

The good news is published

by us.

We have a special edition every moment,

and we need you to read it.

The good news is that you are alive,

and the linden tree is still there,

standing firm in the harsh Winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that your child is there before you,

and your arms are available:

hugging is possible.

They only print what is wrong.

Look at each of our special editions.

We always offer the things that are not wrong.

We want you to benefit from them

and help protect them.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Listen! You have ears that can hear it.

Bow your head.

Listen to it.

Leave behind the world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

~ from Call Me by My True Names, The Collected Poems of Thích Nhất Hạnh, Parallax Press, 2005

You are not there to weep.
You are there because they are weeping.
And the world must know.

You are not there to show us how you care.
You are there to show how they care.
So the world can care too.

You will not be thanked.
You will not be loved.
Not even by yourself.

The words you did not say,
the tears you did not shed,
will come back to you
years afterwards, when no-one will remember
and no-one understands
that ink can bring enlightenment
but always stains the hand.

~This poem appeared as part of Poem of the Week in The Guardian, 9 September 2024

These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

~ from The Four Quartets (ValdeBooks, 2023)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)