Short Poems

Bury in order the snow-melt
and the spring night,

and somewhere in the next world
water drops fall from the eaves

while at the very edge of your far away
lips, now the whole universe collapses.

My mind is like the Panama Canal.
Great ocean-going ideas
Lie moored in the locks
Until my thought rises to the level
Where they can proceed.
Every now and then
There is a brainslide in the Culebra Cut
And all traffic is halted.

Plenty are good and wise, but they only count as a sample,
For o'er them not heart, but an idea has sway.
And the idea is sad, from a thousand varying emblems
Nothing bringing to light but a necessitous ONE .
But life rollicks along content in the presence of beauty,
Knows in a thousand forms to metamorphose that ONE .

Alas, Chao of Nippon—you who left the Imperial City
To sail the waters where the fabled islands are!
Alas, the bright moon has sunk into the blue sea nevermore to return,
And gray clouds of sorrow fill the far skies of the south.

Fire-fly, fire-fly, light me to bed.
Come, come, little insect of light,
You are my candle, and light me to go.

Tossed aside in the uproar
No Sho was quenched;
But in his verses
You will hear a satirical whisper
Like the hiss of a cigarette stub
Cast into a sink.

LXXII

Speak thou and speed where will or power aught help'th.
Where power doth want, will must be won by wealth.
For need will speed where will works not his kind,
And gain, thy foes thy friends shall cause thee find.
For suit and gold, what do not they obtain?
Of good and bad the tryers are these twain.

Lo! Swift to idiots bequeaths his store:
Be wise, ye rich—consider thus the poor.

The Seraph scanned the murderer in the dock—
The motionless Judge, beneath the court-room clock,
The listening jury, warders, counsel, Clerk;
Ay, one and all who shared that deepening dark:
And then, as I shunned to see,
He turned his burning eyes and looked at me.

B RANCUSI is a galoot; he saves tickets to take him nowhere; a galoot with his baggage ready and no timetable; ah yes, Brancusi is a galoot; he understands birds and skulls so well, he knows the hang of the hair of the coils and plaits on a woman's head, he knows them so far back he knows where they came from and where they are going; he is fathoming down for the secrets of the first and the oldest makers of shapes.