10 Quotes in Preparation for World Poetry Day 2016

10 Quotes in Preparation for World Poetry Day 2016

March 21st is World Poetry Day! In preparation for this marvelous event, I’ve selected 10 quotes from international poets. For this list, I’ve tried to put an emphasis on poets whose work wasn’t originally published in English. For myself, I used this event as a learning opportunity as I have very little experience in the area of poetry. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments!

10 Quotes in Preparation for World Poetry Day

1. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

In the long months   

that followed,   

I wonder if her heart fell 

the way her arches fell, 

her instep arches.

“The Mermaid in the Hospital”

2. Anna Akhmatova

Call me a sinner,

Mock me maliciously:

I was your insomnia,

I was your grief. 

Unknown

3. Octavio Paz

Beyond myself, somewhere, 

I wait for my arrival.

Unknown

4. Jorge Luis Borges

After a while you learn…

That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Unknown

5. Pablo Neruda

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Unknown

6. Rainer Maria Rilke

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go.

For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

Unknown

7. Marina Tsvetaeva

However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest.

We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity

Unknown

8. Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

Unknown

9. Yehuda Amichai

Look, just as time isn’t inside clocks

love isn’t inside bodies:

bodies only tell the love.

Unknown

10. Rabindranath Tagore

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

“Stray Birds”