Short Poems

What a solace
from the loneliness
of my home
are cherries in full bloom—
bringing those
who never visit
calling at my door.

A single night,
that is all
one needs to know
it was a lie;
what am I hoping for,
then,
to persevere

My very life
I would give
in pursuit
of the one I love.
Why then
do I begrudge
the ruin
of my good name?

If only words
had the power
to describe
the cherry blossoms—
then one would need
no broken branch
to tell people
of their color.

Purple inkstone, yellow volumes, I love my room.
Guests are few in the autumn dusk that's clear, too clear.
Eyes troubled, I've stirred the lamp four times,
not noticing that sparks flew and singed my book.

Through pains and pleasures I grow old;
through heat and cold years and months flow.
In a family of the same bones and flesh
for six decades, I have few springs and autumns left.
In thought and dreams I meet dead friends;
in declining years I think of travels of the past.
Yet plum blossoms keep their old face.
I look, and their cold fragrance is profound.

Unwalled it lies, and open as the sun
When God swings wide the dark doors of the East.
Oh, keep this one spot, still this one,
Where tramp or banker, laymen or high priest,
May equal meet before the face of God:
Yea, equals stand upon that common sod
Where they shall one day equals be
Beneath, for aye, and all eternity.

When the Storm thickens, and the Ocean rolls,
When Nature trembles to the frightful Poles,
The pious mind nor Doubts nor fears assail,
Tempests are Zephyrs, or a gentler Gale.

A tract of light divides on either hand
The darkness of the clouds and of the land,
Low-stretched across the sky, like yellow sand;
Like yellow sand upon the billowy shore;
Of all the sunset there remains no more,
The sand is threatened by the breaker's roar.

I lived, and bore.
And, though I died,
So that I lived to bear—
My daughter lived and bore.