Short Poems

I have spent ten years
building a grass hut;
Now winds occupy half,
the moon fills the rest.
I cannot let in hills and waters:
I will display them all around.

“W HO is he?” asked the seekers of the dead,
—When they had come where cold and stiff he lay.
“He was a man,” the old retainer said,

My hair was caught in the wheels of a clock
and torn from my head: see, I am bald!

This is the gift of Hephaestus, the artificer,
the god men say is lame.

The imperious dawn comes
to the clink of milk bottles
and round-shouldered sparrows twittering.

Cool wind rising. Sun sparkling on the wide canal.
Pink lofuses, bent down by day, spread open at night.
There is too much pleasure; a day cannot contain it.
Clear sounds of strings, smooth flowing notes of flageolets—we sing the “Jade Love-Bird” song.
A thousand years? Ten thousand? Nothing could exceed such delight.

We drew our circle that shut him out,
This man of Science who dared our doubt.
But ah, with a fourth dimensional grin,
He squared a circle that took us in!

Spring larch should set the body shaking
In masterless pleasure,
But virtue lies in a square making—
The making pleasure.
True, the poet's true place is in that high wood,
And his gaze on it,
But work has a bent, and some grey sort of good.
Worship, or a sonnet?

Fragrant with powder, moist with perspiration,
They are the pegs of a jade inlaid harp
Aroused by spring, they are soft as cream
Under the fertilizing mist
After my bath my perfumed lover
Holds them and plays with them.
And they are cool as peonies and purple grapes.

A good rain knows its season.
It comes at the edge of Spring.
It steals through the night on-the breeze.
Noiselessly wetting everything
Dark night, the clouds black as the roads,
Only a light on a boat gleaming.
In the morning, thoroughly soaked with water,
the flowers hang their heavy heads.