Short Poems

I seem bound to sleep
in this village tonight:
led astray by falling
blossoms, I've forgotten

It's their falling without regret
I admire—
Cherry blossoms:
a world of sadness
if they'd stayed.

If saying “stay!”
would stop their
falling, could I hold
these blossoms

On hills where mists of spring
trail, glowing faintly,
do the flowers' fading
colors foretell

I lingered only a moment
beneath the plum blossoms
and now I am
blamed for my
scented sleeves.

Where are the promised
mists of spring?
In Yoshino, fair hills
of Yoshino, snow
falling still.

It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.

The Empress Maria Theresa
Had a poodle called Sneezer
Which severely bit
A Prussian from Tilsit.

Now in this thankless world the givers
Are envied ev'n by the receivers;
'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion,
Rather to hide than pay the obligation.
Nay, 'tis much worse than so;
It now an artifice does grow,
Wrongs and outrages to do,
Lest men should think we owe.

That Tsugunobu—
he too thought nine times out of ten
the arrow would miss him.