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| Preface | |
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| Enheduanna (ca. 2300 B.C.E.) | |
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| from The Hymn to Inanna | |
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| Shu-Sin's Ritual Bride (ca. 2000 B.C.E.) | |
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| Bridegroom, beloved of my heart | |
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| Makeda, Queen of Sheba (ca. 1000 B.C.E.) | |
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| Wisdom is | |
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| I fell | |
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| Sappho (7th c. B.C.E.) | |
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| Leave Crete | |
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| Evening Star who gathers everything | |
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| Sumangalamata (6th c. B.C.E.) | |
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| At last free | |
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| Patacara (6th c. B.C.E.) | |
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| When they plow their fields | |
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| Zi Ye (6th-3rd c. B.C.E.) | |
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| All night I could not sleep | |
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| Song of Songs: The Shulammite (ca. 3rd c. B.C.E.) | |
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| I am dark, daughters of Jerusalem (Song 1:5-6) | |
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| At night on my bed I longed for (Song 3:1-5) | |
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| I was asleep but my heart stayed awake (Song 5:2-6) | |
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| Come, my beloved (Song 7:12-14) | |
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| Pan Zhao (48-117?) | |
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| Needle and Thread | |
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| Gnostic Gospel: Nag Hammadi Library (2nd-4th c.) | |
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| from The Thunder: Perfect Mind | |
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| A Roman Spell (2nd-4th c.?) | |
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| I bind you by oath | |
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| Sabina Lampadius (fl. ca. 377) | |
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| As a symbol | |
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| Antal (8th c.) | |
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| O sister of wealth | |
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| O you who guard over | |
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| We rose before dawn | |
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| Rabi'a (717-801) | |
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| I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper . . . | |
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| O my Lord,/if I worship you | |
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| O my Lord,/the stars glitter | |
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| Yeshe Tsogyel (757?-817?) | |
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| Listen,/O brothers and sisters | |
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| Lakshminkara (8th c.) | |
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| Lay your head on a block of butter and chop - | |
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| Three Tantric Buddhist Women's Songs (8th-11th c.) | |
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| KYE HO! Wonderful!/Lotus pollen wakes up . . . | |
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| Who speaks the sound of an echo? | |
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| KYE HO! Wonderful!/You may say "existence". . . | |
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| Kassiane (804?-?) | |
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| Troparion | |
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| Yu Xuanji (843?-868) | |
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| At Home in the Summer Mountains | |
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| Izumi Shikibu (974?-1034?) | |
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| I cannot say | |
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| Watching the moon | |
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| Although I try | |
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| Although the wind | |
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| The way I must enter | |
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| Ly Ngoc Kieu (1041-1113) | |
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| Birth, old age | |
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| Li Qingzhao (1084-1151?) | |
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| Written to the Tune "The Fisherman's Honor" | |
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| Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) | |
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| Antiphon for Divine Wisdom | |
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| Antiphon for the Holy Spirit | |
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| Antiphon for the Angels | |
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| Song to the Creator | |
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| Alleluia-verse for the Virgin | |
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| Kojiju (1121?-1201?) | |
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| On the Spirit of the Heart as Moon-Disk | |
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| Sun Bu-er (1124-?) | |
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| Cut brambles long enough | |
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| Late Indian summer's | |
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| Zhou Xuanjing (12th c.) | |
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| Meditating at midnight | |
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| Cui Shaoxuan (dates unknown) | |
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| Black hair and red cheeks: for how long? | |
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| Mahadeviyakka (12th c.) | |
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| (On Her Decision to Stop Wearing Clothes) | |
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| So long as this breath fills your nostrils | |
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| When I am hungry | |
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| A vein of sapphires | |
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| It was like a stream | |
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| When the body becomes Your mirror | |
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| I do not call it his sign | |
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| Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207?-1282? or 1297?) | |
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| I cannot dance, O Lord | |
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| A fish cannot drown in water | |
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| God speaks to the soul | |
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| How the soul speaks to God | |
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| How God answers the soul | |
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| The desert has many teachings | |
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| How God comes to the soul | |
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| Effortlessly | |
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| God's absence | |
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| True love in every moment praises God | |
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| Of all that God has shown me | |
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| Marguerite Porete (?-1310) | |
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| Beloved, what do you want of me? | |
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| Hadewijch of Antwerp (13th c.) | |
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| Love's maturity | |
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| Knowing Love in herself | |
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| Love's constancy | |
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| The madness of love | |
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| Love has subjugated me | |
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| Hadewijch II (13th c.) | |
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| All things/are too small | |
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| If I desire something, I know it not | |
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| Tighten/to nothing | |
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| You who want/knowledge | |
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| The French Beguine (late 13th c.) | |
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| from The Soul Speaks | |
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| Jusammi Chikako (fl. ca. 1300) | |
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| On this summer night | |
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| Janabai (1298?-1350?) | |
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| Cast off all shame | |
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| Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) | |
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| from Prayer 20 | |
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| Lal Ded (14th c.?) | |
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| I drag a boat over the ocean | |
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| I was passionate | |
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| The soul, like the moon | |
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| This world,/compared to You - | |
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| Coursing in emptiness | |
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| To learn the scriptures is easy | |
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| I searched for my Self | |
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| On the way to God the difficulties | |
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| At the end of a crazy-moon night | |
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| Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547) | |
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| As a starved little bird, who sees and hears | |
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| I see in my mind, surrounding God | |
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| Mirabai (1498-1565?) | |
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| O friends, I am mad | |
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| Love has stained my body | |
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| All I Was Doing Was Breathing | |
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| The wild woman of the forests | |
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| O friends on this Path | |
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| The song of the flute, O sister, is madness | |
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| O friend, understand: the body | |
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| Why Mira Can't Go Back to Her Old House | |
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| I was going to the river for water | |
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| The Heat of Midnight Tears | |
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| It's True I Went to the Market | |
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| Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) | |
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| (Lines written on a bookmark found in her Breviary) | |
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| Maria de' Medici, Queen of France (1573-1642) | |
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| (To the Virgin) | |
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| Two Nahuatl Invocations (early 1600s) | |
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| (Invocation for storing corn) | |
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| (A midwife's invocation) | |
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| Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) | |
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| from The Vanity of All Worldly Things | |
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| Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-1694) | |
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| On the Ineffable Inspiration of the Holy Spirit | |
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| On the Fruit-Providing Autumn Season | |
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| from On the Sweet Comfort Brought by Grace | |
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| Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648?-1695) | |
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| Because my Lord was born to suffer | |
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| Since Love is shivering | |
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| Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) | |
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| The morning glory! | |
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| Grazing/ my fishing line | |
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| From the mind/of a single, long vine | |
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| Ann Griffiths (1776-1805) | |
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| His left hand, in heat of noonday | |
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| Emily Bronte (1818-1848) | |
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| No coward soul is mine | |
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| Bibi Hayati (?-1853) | |
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| Is this darkness the night of Power . . . | |
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| Before there was a trace of this world of men | |
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| Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) | |
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| Who has not found the Heaven - below - | |
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| I never saw a Moor - | |
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| Death is a dialogue between | |
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| The Props assist the House | |
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| Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? | |
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| I'm ceded - I've stopped being Theirs - | |
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| 'Tis little I - could care for Pearls - | |
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| I had been hungry, all the Years - | |
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| Mine - by the Right of the White Election! | |
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| Wild Nights - Wild Nights! | |
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| The Infinite a sudden Guest | |
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| Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip | |
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| A Georgia Sea Island Shout Song (19th c.) | |
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| Down to the Mire | |
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| Penny Jessye's Deathbed Spiritual (19th c.) | |
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| Good Lord in That Heaven | |
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| Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) | |
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| After Communion | |
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| from Behold a Shaking | |
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| Amen | |
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| from Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets | |
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| Uvavnuk (19th c.) | |
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| The great sea | |
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| Two Kwakiutl Women's Prayers (ca. 1895) | |
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| Prayer of a Woman in Charge of Berry Picking . . . | |
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| Prayer to the Sockeye Salmon | |
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| Owl Woman (mid-19th-early 20th c.) | |
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| How shall I begin my song | |
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| Brown owls come here in the blue evening | |
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| Black Butte is far | |
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| The morning star is up | |
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| An Osage Woman's Initiation Song (early 20th c.) | |
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| Planting Initiation Song | |
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| A Traditional Navajo Prayer (early 20th c.) | |
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| Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating | |
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| H. D. (1886-1961) | |
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| White World | |
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| from The Walls Do Not Fall [25] | |
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| from The Walls Do Not Fall [36] | |
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| from Sagesse [10] | |
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| Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) | |
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| Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold | |
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| A land not mine, still | |
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| Summer Garden | |
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| Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) | |
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| from Prayer | |
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| The Rose | |
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| Those Who Do Not Dance | |
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| Song | |
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| Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) | |
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| How long have we forgotten how to listen! | |
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| Your eyes, O my beloved | |
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| Someone | |
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| Rushing at times like flames | |
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| In the evening your vision widens | |
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| But perhaps God needs the longing | |
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| Edith Sodergran (1892-1923) | |
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| On Foot I Had to Walk Through the Solar Systems | |
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| "There is no one . . ." | |
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| Forest Lake | |
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| Question | |
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| Homecoming | |
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| Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) | |
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| I know the truth | |
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| I bless the daily labor | |
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| If the soul was born with pinions | |
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| God (3) | |
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| The gold that was my hair has turned | |
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| Kadya Molodowsky (1894-1975) | |
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| Prayers: I | |
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| Sub-ok (1902-1966) | |
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| Spring at Yesan Station | |
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| A Note on the Translations | |
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| For Further Reading | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| About the Editor | |
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| Alphabetical Index of Authors | |