What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In the first series, The Poems of Others, our editors pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
The iron bird, the bird of steel
who after having lacerated the clouds of morning
would want to puncture the stars
beyond the day,
retreats, as if in remorse,
into an artificial cave.

The corporeal bird, the feathered bird,
who forces a tunnel through the wind
to get to the moon he’s seen in a dream
among the branches
falls with the night
into a labyrinth of leaves.

And the disembodied one—he
who ravishes the custodian of the skull
with a stammering song—
opens those echoing wings
moves to pacify space
never to return except once, as an immortal.

 
LES TROIS OISEAUX​

L’oiseau de fer, l’oiseau d’acier,
après avoir lacéré les nuages du matin
et voulu picorer des étoiles
au-delà du jour,
descend comme à regret
dans une grotte artificielle.

L’oiseau de chair, l’oiseau de plumes
qui creuse un tunnel dans le vent
pour parvenir jusqu’à la lune qu’il a vue en rêve
dans les branches,
tombe en même temps que le soir
dans un dédale de feuillage.

Celui qui est immatériel, lui,
charme le gardien du crâne
avec son chant balbutiant,
puis ouvre des ailes résonnantes
et va pacifier l’espace
pour n’en revenir qu’une fois éternel.
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Vivek Narayanan's handwritten copy and translation of "The Three Birds"

"When, at the age of 15, I was touched again by Gray’s 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' it actually frightened me, as if I were being called by ghosts and ancestors down an unwise path. I gingerly started getting into some of the Americans and the moderns but it seemed almost obvious that people like me didn’t become poets."
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Screen shot of Takunda Muzondiwa

Zimbabwe-born school student Takunda Muzondiwa talks about the racism she has faced in her adopted country of New Zealand. Her performance, part of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission's annual Race Unity Speech awards, has attracted more than 500,000 views.

via THE GUARDIAN 
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