Status Updates From Language for a New Century:...

You knew I saw you as a delicate flower,
a shining essence in the depths of that sea
Though you were half-hiding your face from me,
I saw the blossoming branch end to end.

from Quatrains, by Ustad Khalilullah Khalili, translated from the Dari/Persian by Robert Abdul Hayy Darr

Sonnet, by Xi Xi

It's been a long time since you've read any of my poems, you say
It's because I haven't written anything, but if I had
How would things stand?
If there's anything I have a handle on
It's the written word
And since it would please you
I'll take what's in my heart and set it to a sonnet
You start it, and I'll carry on
You dance inside it
Freeze, then change
If I really believed in written words...

Small, by Gevorg Emin

Yes, we are small
the smallest pebble
in a field of stones.
But have you felt the hurtle
of pebbles pitched
from a mountaintop?

Small,
as the smallest mountain stream
storing rapids, currents,
unknown to wide and lazy valley rivers.

Small,
like the bullet in the bore
of the rifle;
small as the corn waiting to sprout.

Small
as the pinch of salt
that seasons the table.

Small, yes,

[...]
If there were no war,
The harvest of a thousand years could grow in one day.
[...]
If there were no war,
We could avoid untimely deaths.
Our hair would gray very late.
If there were no war,
We would face
Neither grief, nor parting.
If there were no war,
The bullet of mankind would be his word,
And the word of mankind would be love.

—from If There Were No War by Mammad Araz, transl. from Azeri by Aytan Aliyeva

We travel to go far away from the place of our birth and see the other side of sunrise.
We travel toward unwritten destinies.
We travel to confide to passersby that we are passersby too, and our stay in memory and oblivion is temporary.
We travel to tell those we love that we still love them.
We travel so that if we returned to our homeland we would feel like immigrants everywhere.

In what language do I pray?

Do I meditate in language?

In what language am I trying
to speak when I wake from dreams?

Do I think of myself as an American,
or simply as woman when I wake?

[...] Or do I think of my grandmother
at Ellis Island,

or as an orphan in an Armenian village?

Do I think of myself as hyphenated?

No. Most of the time, even as you,
I forget labels.

Unless you cut me.
...

Does solitude offer strength over time,
or is denial of it the only practical aim?

If my mother cannot see how else
to be happy, is it enough that she may lie

in bed, convinced God watches her sleep?
After severe loss, what does the heart

learn that it has not already understood
about regret? When all light finally

forsakes a room, do we take the time
to interrogate the dark, and to what end?