Short Poems

One woman may robe herself in a tunic of white wool. Another dress in a garment of silk and gold. Another covers herself with flowers, with leaves and grapes.

As for me, I take no joy of life except when naked. My lover takes me just as I am; without robes, or jewels, or sandals. Behold me, Bilitis, naked, alone.

My hair is black with its own blackness, my lips are red with their own color. My locks float about me free and round, like feathers.

How often our beliefs more than our doubts
Ruin and mar us here, clog the soul's feet,
And shackle the heart's best impulses so,
That for Heaven's love we do inhuman things,
And with a (Unclear quietude
Hear babes moan in the everlasting fire!

It's my fifth birthday & I'm sitting on the present that Uncle Stan has just given me, a green Schwinn bicycle. He gives me a push & down I go, down the gentle slope in his back yard in Chicago that becomes a hill, an interminably long hill that, sixty years later, I'm still going down, the bicycle having become rusty & dilapidated but still capable of moving as fast as the wind.

When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat,
As full of Champagne as an egg's full of meat,
He waked in the boat, and to Charon he said,
He would be row'd back, for he was not yet dead.
Trim the boat and sit quiet, stern Charon replied,
You may have forgot - you were drunk when you died.

भीतर भीतर सब रस चूसै ।
हँसि हँसि कै तन मन धन मूसै ।
जाहिर बातन मैं अति तेज ।
क्यों सखि सज्जन नहिं अँगरेज ।

Beyond the pasture's withered bents,
Upstanding hop, recumbent fleece,
And sheaves of wheat, like weathered tents,
A twilight bivouac of peace.

BETWEEN the poles of the conscious and the unconscious, there has the mind made a swing:
Thereon hang all beings and all worlds, and that swing never ceases its sway.
Millions of beings are there: the sun and the moon in their courses are there:
Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.
All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water; and the Lord Himself taking form:
And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.

Thy beauty hangs around thee like
Splendour around the moon--
Thy voice, as silver bells that strike
Upon...

zhu men jiu rou chou
lu you dong si gu

Behind the gates of the wealthy
food lies rotting from waste
Outside it's the poor
who lie frozen to death

Between My Country—and the Others—
There is a Sea—
But Flowers—negotiate between us—
As Ministry.