Short Poems

My friends, my noble friends, know ye—
That in my waking hours I think of ye
—Ever in godlike band uncompromised & free

Did I hear you ask
what the fires of hell
are burning for?
They burn away evil
and the firewood is you!

I too
grew up the same way,
passing the years
playing games like them
in the garden sand

Even in a latter age
this art alone
remains unchanged!
But had I not had that dream,
I'd have thought it none of my affair

And when you're gone
I'll keep on gazing,
as though waiting for the moon,
gazing eastward
at the evening sky

Only the moon
high in the sky
as an empty reminder—
but if, looking at it, we just remember,
our two hearts may meet

On the road with not a soul
to keep me company,
as evening falls
katydids lift their voices
and cheer me along

I'd have it first one way, then the reverse—
in blossom-viewing spring,
never mind nighttime,
in moon-viewing autumn,
do away with days!

If I don't do Zen meditation to wipe out deluded thoughts
then I must pace around drunkenly, spouting crazy songs.
Otherwise in the autumn moon, evenings of springtime breeze,
how to cope with these idle yearnings for the past?

Three lonely months and more without news—
now a favorable wind blows me a letter.
“Someone made off with the tree by the western gate.
Strangers have set up camp in that lot in the north garden.”
Ginger wrapped in a paper marked MEDICINE,
a bamboo packet of seaweed “for fasting days.”
Not a word of the hunger and cold my wife and children must be suffering—
she didn't mean it that way, but I worry all the more.