Short Poems

Onto a charcoal kiln
a vine keeps climbing while
being burnt to death.

Earth bore me; and, God helping me
betimes, I had some little worth;
(how small He knoweth) and upon
my errantry set forth at birth;
humbled, triumphant, bore my load
of scars, and burst my road to earth
quia pulvis sum

The sea is rough;
Over the island of Sado
Extends the Milky Way.

It was at a wine party—
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.

With monkeys whimpering on the shadowy mountain,
And the river rushing through the night,
And a wind in the leaves along both banks,
And the moon athwart my solitary sail,
I, a stranger in this inland district,
Homesick for my Yang-chou friends,
Send eastward two long streams of tears
To find the nearest touch of the sea.

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems.

Learn thou, the Life is, spreading life through all,
It cannot anywhere, by any means,
Be anywise diminished, stayed or changed.
But for these fleeting frames which it informs
With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde;
Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God,
As I wad do were I Lord God,
And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.

There was an Old Person of Rheims,
Who was troubled with horrible dreams;
So, to keep him awake, they fed him with cake,
Which amused that Old Person of Rheims.

Grown old in Love from Seven till Seven times Seven
I oft have wished for Hell for Ease from Heaven