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Literature For Fil

This document provides excerpts of poetry from various countries and regions including Japan, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, and India. It includes Haiku poems by Matsuo Basho and Tamaguchi Buson from Japan. From China, it shares poems including "To My Husband" by Hsu Shu, and poems by Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chu. From Pakistan, it includes "Ghazal No. 9" by Mohammad Iqbal. The document also provides the "Prayer of the Hungry" poem from Indonesia by W. Rendra and poems from India including "To India – My Native Land" by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and "Mother, I

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2K views16 pages

Literature For Fil

This document provides excerpts of poetry from various countries and regions including Japan, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, and India. It includes Haiku poems by Matsuo Basho and Tamaguchi Buson from Japan. From China, it shares poems including "To My Husband" by Hsu Shu, and poems by Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chu. From Pakistan, it includes "Ghazal No. 9" by Mohammad Iqbal. The document also provides the "Prayer of the Hungry" poem from Indonesia by W. Rendra and poems from India including "To India – My Native Land" by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and "Mother, I

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lrac_adazol
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Rose S.

Soriano

POETRY

JAPAN

THE HAIKU
(Translated by Harold Henderson)

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Old pond:
Frog jump- in
water - sound
Many, many things
They bring to mind
cherry blossoms
On a withered branch
A crow has settled
Autumn nightfall
The summer grasses grow
Of mighty warriors splendid dreams
the afterglow.
A lightning- gleam:

Into darkness travels


A night- herons scream.

Tamaguchi Buson (1715-1783)

Blossoms on the pear


And a woman in the moonlight
Reads a letter there
What piercing cold I feel
My dead wifes come, in our bedroom,
Under my heel

OTHER HAIKU

No dont swat the fly


Its wringing its hands
Its wringing its feet
-Issa

Softly comes the snow


You cant hear it when it falls
First stop is my nose
-Anonymous

My mom makes sweaters


For our groceries and for money
And for my new bike.
-Anonymous
Migrating birds
Theres still a war
Going on somewhere
-Anonymous

The colour of sun


It brightens up the whole room

My yellow bedspread
-Anonymous

Pencils dont
Get short;
Summer vacation
-Anonymous

I wonder how far


May he have wondered this brave
Hunter of dragonflies.
-Kaga no Chiyo

CHINA

TO MY HUSBAND
Hsu Shu

Hapless am I!
In sickness I came here
I am lingering within these doors,
For, though time passes, I remain uncured.
I neglect attention to you,
I break the laws of love and duty
Now you, sir, to obey orders,
Have gone to the far-off Capital.
Long, long will be our separation
And there is no way to tell you my thoughts.
Expecting your return I am all eagerness
And waiting for you, I stand about aimlessly,
My thoughts of you are knitted in my heart,
In sleep I think of your radiant countenance.
You have gone far away,
Your separation from me is daily lengthening.

Would that I had wings,


That I might fly after you.
Oft do moan, and deep do I sigh,
And tears wet my coat.

RICHES AND HONOUR

Cheng Ao
(Cheng Yun Son)

A fair lady makes her toilet;


Her whole head is streaked with jewels,
How can she guess that two cloud-like tresses
Carry the tribute from many villages?

QUESTION AND ANSWER AMONG THE MOUNTAINS


Li Po

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;


I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care,
As the peach- blossom flows down stream is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

A MOONLIGHT NIGHT
Tu Fu

That night at Fu-Chou in moonlight,


In her chamber she alone looks out;
Afar I pity my little children

That they know not yet think of Chaang-an


In the sweet mist her cloud-like tresses are damp;
In the clear moonlight her jade-like arms are cold.
When shall we two nestle against those unfilled curtains,
With the moon displaying the dried tear-stains of us both?

MY GAZING FROM THE SOUTHERN PAVILION WHILE ON THE SICK LEAVE


Po Chu

Leaning on my pillow, away from my office,


With doors closed for two days,
At last I understand that in the service of the State,
It is only in sickness that a man has leisure.
Leisurely thoughts depend not on space,
For this small summer-house is but ten feet square,
Yet above the western caves and the bamboo tops,
Without rising I can see the Tai- Po mountains.
I blush afar that the clouds on the hill-tops.
Should look down on this face with its dust of toil.

PAKISTAN
GHAZAL NO. 9

Ghazal No. 9 is by Mohammad Iqbal (1873-1938), the father of Pakistani


poetry. The Ghazal is to Muslims what the sonnet is to Western tradition. It has strict
meter and rhyme form.

Fabric of earth and wind and wave!


Who is the secret, you or I,
Brought into light? or who the dark
World of what hides yet, you or I?
Here in this night of grief and pain;
Trouble and toil, that men call life,
Who is the dawn, or who dawns prayer
Cried from the minaret, you or I?
Who is the load that Time and Space
Bear or their shoulder? Who the prize
Run for with fiery feat by swift
Daybreak and sunset, you and I?
You are pinch of dust and bilnd,
You are a pinch of dust that feels,
Through the dry lead, Existence, who
Flows like a streamlet, you or I?

INDONESIA

PRAYER OF THE HUNGRY


W. Rendra

HUNGER is a smooth black


crow.
Millions of crows
Like a black cloud.
O God!
How terrifying crows are.
And hunger is black crow.
Continually terrifying.
Hunger is rebellion.
Is the mysterious force
Moving the murderers knife
In the hand of the poor.
Hunger is coral rocks
Beneath the sleeping face of the sea.
Is the betrayal of honour.
A strong young man crying
To see his own hands
Lay honour down
Because of hunger.
Hunger is a devil
Hunger is a devil offering dictatorship.
O God!
Hunger is black hands

Putting handfuls of alum


Into the stomach of the poor.
O God!
We kneel.
Our eyes are Your eyes.
This is Your mouth.
This is Your heart.
And this is Your stomach.
Your stomach hungers, O God.
Your stomach chews alum
And broken glass.
O God!
How nice a plate of rice,
A bowl of soup and a cup of coffee would be.
O God!
Hunger is a crow.
Millions of black crows
Like a black cloud
Blotting out my view
Of Your heaven.

INDIA
TO INDIA MY NATIVE LAND
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio

My country! In thy day of glory past


A beauteous halo circled round thy brow,
And worshipped as a deity thou was. Where that reverence now?
Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last,
And groveling in the lowly dust art thou:
Thy mistrel hath no wreath to weave for thee.
Save the sad story of thy misery!
Well let me dive into the depths of time,
And bring from out the ages that have rolled
A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime,
Which human eye may never more labor be
My fallen country! One kind wish from thee!

MOTHER, I BOW TO THEE


Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

Mother, I bow to thee!


Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving, Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams

Over thy branches and lordly streams,


Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of cease,
Laughing low and sweet!
mother, I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,
When the swords flash out in twice seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who are mighty and stored,
To thee I call, Mother and Lord!
Thou who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman crave
Back from plain and sea
And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom, thou are law,
Thou our heart, our soul, our breath
Thou the love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine

In our temples is but thine.


Thou are Durga, lady and queen,
With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,
Thou are Lakshmi lotus-throned
And the Muse a hundred-toned.
Pure and Perfect without peer,
Mother, lend thine ear.
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Dark of hue, O candid fair
In thy soul, with jeweled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother, sweet, I bow to thee
Mother great and free!

World Literature, ( A Tertiary Textbook For Literature II Under The New


Curriculum ) Revised
Edition Rex Publishing House , 2003
World Literature ( Asian, African, Islamic and South American )
Katha Publishing Co., Inc. 2010

Rose S. Soriano

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