Short Poems

Revives a relic
Liquefies dry blood
Touches a corpse
To the quick
Converts a monster to love—
Who made man from mud

a country lake ~
white storks on a song
clattering mandibles
...

Not thou,
White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart's
Shed blood.

more than the black
which it displaces—
Upon any fine day
I jump these traces

White blossoms of the pear
and a woman in moonlight
reading a letter.


Translated by Robert Hass

White are the robes, my Kamdev wears.
His brow is adorned in flowers red,
His path, I'd take in drunken stupor,
go, tell my love of my pangs

While departing from this world there is no need to grieve
For they alone find happiness who have suffered grief;
Those who have sacrificed their lives in the quest of life
They alone are remembered by those who live.

Whichever book
we read, we find
what is inside
us is in that book
Nothing else.

Oh, where's the use of having gifts that can't be turned to money?
And where's the use of singing, when there's no one wants to hear?
It may be one or two will say your songs are sweet as honey,
But where's the use of honey, when the loaf of bread is dear?

There is not
A single soul among the trees
And I
Don't know where I've gone.