Short Poems

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

What is bitter at first is sweet in the end,
What is sweet at first is poison in the end.
(To everyone is given the choice)
It all depends on the effort put in,
and the unflagging determined will;
For whoever strives must soon arrive at the city of his choice.

What if the entire world opposes your good intents?
What if time and again you are made to suffer pain?
O Zia! Be patient for that would help unlock
Those doors that were once shut upon you.

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know--
the year ending.


Translated by Robert Hass

What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.


Translated by Robert Hass

The birds sang in the wet trees
And I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

Westron wynde when wyll thou blow,
The smalle rayne down can rayne -
Cryst, yf my love wer in my armys
And I yn my bed agayne!

Westron wind, when wilt thou blow
That small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

Well do I know myself, so
Your coldness
I did not think to blame, yet
My bitterness has
Soaked my sleeves, it seems