Short Poems

Here's a song of cheer
For the whole long year:
We've only to do our best,
Take up our part
With a strong, true heart-
The Lord will do all the rest.

A slip of the moon hangs over the capital;
Ten thousand washing-mallets are pounding;
And the autumn wind is blowing my heart
For ever and ever toward the Jade Pass....
Oh, when will the Tartar troops be conquered,
And my husband come back from the long campaign!

Bhaya more meto Hanumaanaa.
Haun baalak main to ati nirbal, mohe nirbhaya balee banaanaa.
Ashta-siddhi nau nidhi ke daataa, ko hai jag men tor samaanaa.
Prabhu kaaraj hita laanghyo saagar, Lankpuree ko kiyo masaanaa.
Mama kaaraj bhee tumahi sanvaaro, hove siddha tumhaar bakhaanaa.
Seetaaraam basen ur more, Raam-naam kaa odhaun baanaa.
Rame Ramayyaacharan sadaa man, as kirapaakarahooHanumaanaa.

A snowy morning--
by myself,
chewing on dried salmon.


Translated by Robert Hass

Lord, I know the duty of a hostess,
but please let it be that this year
either rain clouds visit me
or my loneliness.

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

A self-invented self-portrait
Can please neither Heaven nor earth.
It can only please
The stupidity-unreality.

[Excerpt from Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 76]

Your mistress, that you follow whores, still taxeth
you ;
'Tis strange that she should thus confess it, though 't be true.

A kindly act is a kernel sown,
That will grow to a goodly tree,
Shedding its fruit when time has flown
Down the gulf of eternity.

While only I quaffed yonder secret spring,
'Twas clear and sweet to my imagining.
'Tis turbid now. Or it no more I drink,
But hang o'er other stream or river-brink.