Short Poems

Give me your anathema.
Speak new damnations on my head.
The evening mist in the hills is soft.
The boulders on the road say communion.
The farm dogs look out of their eyes and keep thoughts from the corn cribs.
Dirt of the reeling earth holds horseshoes.
The rings in the whiffletree count their secrets.

One lovely name adorns my song,
And, dwelling in the heart,
For ever falters at the tongue,
And trembles to depart.

The new-born moon gives little light;
now it is covered by floating clouds.
Incense dies, candle gutters, people quiet down;
the night is vast and deep,
it is so hard to sleep,
outside the window, rain beats banana leaves.

Where is he, the woodpecker?
Perched somewhere high in the trees.
His fragile body works so hard:
all day I hear his sound.
What he works towards is flourishing woods,
with no bugs eating trees away!
Alas! The pack of human beings:
they cannot match the heart of this bird.

Miss Millicent Maxse was fond of her Ma,
And chanted her aristocratic tra-la
In contempt of her stern democratic Papa,
And to spite him she married a Markis—ha! ha!

I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.

I Never barked when out of season,
I never bit without a reason;
I ne'er insulted weaker brother,
Nor wronged by force or fraud another.
We brutes are placed a rank below;
Happy for man could he say so.

Witless and dull, I curl up in the hut I love,
laughing that my laziness is so much like yours.
A cramped room all smoky—what rat would live here?
My poor kitchen grown cold—you'll find no fish there!
Through the long night on the quilt corner you share my sleep,
in midday warmth sit with me by the brazier's side.
And now you're off yowling for your lady love—
silhouetting the plum by the eaves next door, a moon just coming up.

On summer nights
just when I'm about to lie down,
a cuckoo sings out his one note
in the breaking dawn

Long parted, you had many new things to tell,
and at all those details I couldn't help smiling.
Time to go, it was very close to dusk,
my servant impatiently urging me to leave.
A shower came, but when it stopped,
the evening sun was still atop the hills.
Paddies with rice seedlings, blue, everywhere,
we parted our sleeves, out of the pine gate.