John Balaban, author of Empires (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), has written numerous other books of poetry, as well as fiction, nonfiction, and Vietnamese translations, and his work has been awarded the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Prize, a National Poetry Series selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Balaban lives with his wife and daughter in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he teaches at North Carolina State University.

Photograph by Carolla Clift.

The Singer with a Bad Voice

translated by John Balaban

Sing so dogs bark, oxen bolt,
so a girl walks out on her lover.

People on couch

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