English

Since Amaro died I cannot sleep at night;
if I do, I meet him in dreams and tears come coursing down.
Last summer he was over three feet tall;
this year he would have been seven years old.
He was diligent and wanted to know how to be a good son,
read his books and recited by heart the “Poem on the Capital.”
Medicine stayed the bitter pain, but only for ten days;
then the wind took his wandering soul off to the Nine Springs.
Since then, I hate the gods and buddhas;
better if they had never made heaven and earth!

Forgotten by the one
I was so sure
would come asking about me—
since then all I do
is wonder if I even exist

In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting,
scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang?
Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
who could help but long for the gardens of home?

Green bubbles—new-brewed wine;
lumps of red—a small stove for heating;
evening comes and the sky threatens snow—
Could you drink a cup, I wonder?

Though I think I'd like to go to France
France is too far away;
I would at least put on a new jacket
and go on a carefree trip
When the train takes a mountain path
I would lean on an aquamarine window
and think alone of happy things
on a May morning when eastern clouds gather
leaving myself to my heart with fresh young grass flaring.

“Come, come, let's go home, look at today's sun.
The sun's gone down, look at today's sun.”
“I left my knit hat at the tea shop, I dropped your fan in the town.
I'll buy you one when I go to Miyoshi Town again.”
“Perhaps the town doesn't have them, he doesn't bring the fan!”
“The summer passes. Let's put the fan away!”

The year stood at its equinox
And bluff the North was blowing,
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
Green hardy things were growing;
I met a maid with shining locks
Where milky kine were lowing.

She wore a kerchief on her neck,
Her bare arm showed its dimple,
Her apron spread without a speck,
Her air was frank and simple.

She milked into a wooden pail
And sang a country ditty,
An innocent fond lovers' tale,
That was not wise nor witty,
Pathetically rustical,
Too pointless for the city.

My blessed Mother dozing in her chair
On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love,
A comfortable Love with soft brown hair
Softened and silvered to a tint of dove,
A better sort of Venus with an air
Angelical from thoughts that dwell above,
A wiser Pallas in whose body fair
Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof.
Winter brought Holly then; now Spring has brought
Paler and frailer Snowdrops shivering;
And I have brought a simple humble thought
—I her devoted duteous Valentine—,

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

I envy e'en the fly its gleams of joy
In the green woods from being but a boy
Among the vulgar and the lowly bred
I envied e'en the hare her grassy bed
Innured to strife and hardship from a child
I traced with lonely step the desert wild
Sigh'd o'er bird pleasures but no nest destroyed
With pleasure felt the singing they enjoyed
Saw nature smile on all and shed no tears
A slave through ages though a child in years
The mockery and scorn of those more old
An Esop in the worlds extended fold
The fly I envy settling in the sun