In your mother's womb you vowed
not to be born again.
When will you recall the vow ?
And die, even while alive
(to all desire, and be released from birth and death):
Great honor will be yours in this life and greater honor after death.
Eyes that spurn yet invite
Like spikes in the sunlight
Of Manhattan’s high-rise—
Babylon’s ladies outshine
Daughters of Jerusalem,
Zion is no easy climb
In Europe's reeking slaughter pen
They mince the flesh of murdered men
While swinish merchants, snout in trough
Drink all the bloody profits off!
In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.
Translated by Robert Hass
In these latter-day,
Degenerate times,
Cherry-blossoms everywhere!
Translated by R.H. Blyth
In the waters of purity, I melted like salt
Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor
doubt remained.
In the center of my heart a star has appeared
And all the seven heavens have become lost in it.
In the thicket's shade
a woman by herself
singing the rice-planting song.
Translated by Robert Hass
Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.
Environment, of house, of city centres, city quarters
Which I look upon and where I walk; years and years.
I have created you in the midst of joy and in the midst of sorrows;
With so many circumstances, with so many things.
And you have been made sensation, the whole of you, for me.
I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people i should like to bite.
