Ole Bienkopp

Sybil Craig, Australian (1901–1989)

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My Bed at the Lake - Sara MacCullch ,  2024

Canadianb . 1992 -

Nude Ascending a Staircase

oil on canvas  4x3ft.  

Moisei Solomonovich Nappelbaum Poet Sergei Yesenin, Moscow c.1920

I am the last poet of the villages the plank bridge lifts a plain song I stand at a farewell service birches swinging leaves like censors

The golden flame will bum down in the candle of waxen flesh and the moon a wooden clock will caw caw my midnight

On the track in the blue field soon the iron guest will appear his black hand will seize oats that the dawn sowed

In a lifeless and alien grip my poems will die too only nodding oats will mourn for their old master

The wind will take up their neighing they will all dance in the morning soon the moon a wooden clock will caw caw my midnight

by Wisława Szymborska tr. Joanna Trzeciak

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help, if 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 except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain and 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.

Moisei Solomonovich Nappelbaum Poet Anna Akhmatova, Moscow 1926