Short Poems

The six month child
Fresh from the tub
Wriggles in our hands.
This is our fish child.
Give her a nickname: Slippery.

On the smooth brow and clustering hair
Myrtle and rose! your wreath combine;
The duller olive I would wear,
Its constancy, its peace, be mine.

As I travel, there are no flowers—
alone, I stand in the tower;
I have no plans to go in search of spring;
only vague resentment.
No flowers—yes, there is one thing
convenient about that:
this year I will be able to escape
the grief when flowers fall.

Above the twelve mountains autumn grasses fade;
cold mist, chilly moon—I pass through Ch'ü-t'ang Gorge.
A traveler in a solitary boat
upon this river of green maples:
I haven't heard the gibbons cry
but my heart breaks anyway.

He goes up the staircase,
stomping on

The float-rigged strands
of the nets
that catch little bream
seem to be moving shoreward—
sad work in Shiozaki Bay

When we flood
the mountain paddies
grown over with sedge grass,
what joyful faces
on the croaking frogs!

Not ill, but too lazy to comb my side-locks and bun;
all day by the window I stay with a book.
The narcissus in the vase, pity, I have yet to discard;
its flowers remain, retain some scent.

The painted tulip in her bloom begun
Opens her painted bosom to the sun
The tempted bee looks on with amorous gaze
To taste her beauty toys & plays
Clouds hide the sun the fair deluder frowns
& in her bosoms gall the plunderer drowns
In vain he buzzes round the clown
& dies self buried & its treasure flown

Loves first warm gushes still their charms reveal
& that bright day when mary first was met
Whose smiles are with me & I almost feel
With thee as bending oer her bosom yet
Heaving confusd its palpitations wild.