Short Poems

When you wake up at night
And it’s dark and frightening,
Climb out of bed
And turn on the lightening.

THE old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?

Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling
Through the unsettled stillness of the night
He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling
That dawn has come and gone and brought no light.

Nimbus clouds erasing stars above Lamoni.
Jaundiced lights. Silos. Loose dogs. Cows
whose stench infuses the handful of homes,
whose sad voices storm the plains with longing.

I am Night: I bring again
Hope of pleasure, rest from pain:
Thoughts unsaid 'twixt Life and Death
My fruitful silence quickeneth.

Niagara falls
with elegant dignity
divine majesty.

Seen on a night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumn, evanescent, wan,
The moon.

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Newborn baby
Opening eyes upon the world
God sees Himself


(Previously published in Poems Md, Apr 2008)

New Year's morning:
the ducks on the pond
quack and quack.


Translated by Robert Hass