Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. I featured one of her poems before. You can find it here. My head was heavy, heavy; so was the atmosphere. I had to ask two times  before my hand would scratch my ear. I thought I should be out and doing! The grass, for one thing, needed mowing. Just then a centipede reared from the spine of my open dictionary. It tried the air with enterprising feelers, then made its way along the gorge between 202 and 203. The valley  of the shadow of death came to mind inexorably. It can’t be easy for the left hand to…

Photo by Charlotte on Unsplash Nâzim Hikmet was a Turkish poet, playwright, director, and novelist. His poems have been translated into more than 50 languages. He spent much of his life in prison for his political beliefs. it’s 1962 March 28th I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin  train night is falling  I never knew I liked night descending like a tired bird on a smokey  wet plain I don’t like comparing nightfall to a tired bird I didn’t know I loved the earth can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it I’ve never worked the earth it must be my only Platonic love and here I’ve loved rivers all this…

Photo by reza shayestehpour on Unsplash Peter Everwine was an American poet (1930-2018) who won many awards including the Lamont Poetry Prize and the Pushcart Prize. He published eight collections of poetry. Philip Levine said of his poetry that “each moment is recorded, laid bare, and sanctified, which is to say the poems possess a quality one finds only in the greatest poetry.” Everwine also translated poems in the Hebrew and Aztec languages. Toward evening, as the light failed and the pear tree at my window darkened, I put down my book and stood at the open door, the first raindrops gusting in the eves, a smell of wet clay in the wind.…