Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!
When Fortune's shield protects you, then beware --
Tomorrow, for your foot she sets a snare.
Her gift, an eaglet's pinion -- now your flight,
Anon, the lethal arrow -- to upbear!
Based on the translation by Solomon Solis-Cohen that's reproduced on page 377 of A Treasury of Jewish Poetry: From Biblical Times to the Present, edited by Nathan and Marynn Ausubel (Crown Publishers, 1957).
THE far guns boom: shell-struck the church is rolled
Skyward athunder, dust of rose and gold:
The staring villa stands. So goes the War:
The limelight lives: extinguished is the star.
No more than that
Dead cat shall I
Escape the corpse
I kept in shape
For the day off
Immortals take
The lines of life are various,
Like roads, and the borders of mountains.
What we are here, a god can complete there,
With harmonies, undying reward, and peace.
'For myself alone, I would not be
Ambitious in my wish; but, for you,
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair,
Ten thousand times more rich.'
To me 'twas given to die; to thee 'tis given
To live: alas! one moment sets us even.
Mark! how impartial is the will of Heaven!
Oh me,
Was there a time
When Paradise knew Eve
In this sweet guise, so placid and
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet andsalutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything--bush and tree--to take the roisterer's mind off his caroling--so it's like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit. There is so much to be seen everywhere that it's like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different.
For her hennaed naib I'll give,
pot-fuls of blood from under my throat,
that tall beloved of mine,
is attired in robes of scent Rasul.
Mir is crying his heart, away,
far in Dooru, oh love
