Short Poems

Hundreds of houses, thousands of houses,—like a chessboard.
The twelve streets like a field planted with rows of cabbage.
In the distance perceptible, dim, dim—the fire of approaching dawn;
And a single row of stars lying to the west of the Five Gates.

Professor Dewar
Is a better man than you are.
None of you asses
Can condense gases.

a bamboo shoot
taking off its sheath—
for a moment, no wind

I HAD written to Aunt Maud,
Who was on a trip abroad,
When I heard she'd died of cramp
Just too late to save the stamp.

If hungry, Lord, I need but bread;
If I be faint, a cooling cup;
Naught, if I weary, save a bed;
If halt, a staff to hold me up;
If needy, fields to till:
Yet, Lord, I wait Thy will.

With roseate hues that pierce th' autumnal haze
The spreading dawn lights up Akashi's shore;
But the fair ship, alas! is seen no more:—
An island veils it from my loving gaze.

When dawn comes
With the flicker flicker
Of sunrise,
How sad the helping each other to put on our clothes!

How well her name an Army doth present,
In whom the Lord of Hosts did pitch his tent!

O foolish mind, thou hast let thy life run all to waste.
In pride thou didst give thyself to evil desires: thou hast not sung the praise of Hari.

This world is as the cotton flower: thou didst see and desire its beauty.
Even as thou didst taste the cotton fibre flew: nothing came into thy hand.

What is the end, now that the time has gone? From the past thou didst gain no profit.
Sur says, From neglect of the praises of Bhagvant comes only regret and beating the breast.

The earth, the rock and the oil of the earth, the slippery frozen places of the earth, these are for homes of rainbow bubbles, curves of the circles of a bubble, curves of the arcs of the rainbow prisms—between sun and rock they lift to the sun their foam feather and go.

Throw your neck back, throw it back till the neck muscles shine at the sun, till the falling hair at the scalp is a black cry, till limbs and knee bones form an altar, and a girl's torso over the fire-rock torso shouts hi yi, hi yee, hallelujah.