When we met the first time at Ch’ang-an
He called me the ‘Lost Immortal’.
Then he loved the Way of Forgetting.
Now under the pine-trees he is dust.
His golden keepsake bought us wine.
Remembering, the tears run down my cheeks.
'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom. It's the awful raincoat
making me look like a selfdefeated self-murdering imaginary gangster, an idiot in a rueful coat, how can they understand my damp packs - my mud packs -
„Look John, a hitchhiker'
„He looks like he's got a gun underneath that I. R. A. coat'
'Look Fred, that man by the road' „Some sexfiend got in print in 1938 in Sex Magazine' –
„You found his blue corpse in a greenshade edition, with axe blots'
There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."
But twelve short years you lived, my son,
Just twelve short years, and then you died:
And now your life's brief course is run,
This grave a father's hopes doth hide.
His Holiness the Abbot
is shitting
in the withered fields.
Translated by Robert Hass
He that will sow his field with hopefull seed,
Must every bramble, every thistle weed;
And when each hindrance to the graine is gone,
A fruitfull crop shall rise of corn alone.
High diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jump'd over the moon;
The little dog laugh'd
To see such craft,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
Hieroglyphic
mystery in ancient stone
wisdom old as Time
(Previously published in Borders and Time, March 2000)
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
Hey, sparrow!
out of the way,
Horse is coming.
Translated by Robert Hass
