Short Poems

How often, these hours, have I heard the monotonous crool of a dove —
Voice, low, insistent, obscure, since its nest it has hid in a grove —
Flowers of the linden wherethrough the hosts of the honeybees rove.

And I have been busily idle: no problems; nothing to prove;
No urgent foreboding; but only life's shallow habitual groove:
Then why, if I pause to listen, should the languageless note of a dove
So dark with disquietude seem? And what is it sorrowing of?

When to the inward darkness of my mind
I bid your face come, not one hue replies
Of that curved cheek, no, nor the faint-tinged rose
Of lips, nor smile between the mouth and eyes:
Only the eyes themselves, past telling, seem
To break in beauty in the twilight there,
And out of solitude your very ghost
Steals through the scarce-seen shadow of your hair.

O thou who pausest here,
With naught but some thorned wilding near
To tell of beauty; be not sad.
For he who in this grave is laid
Would give the all on earth he had
One moment but by thee to stand
And with warm hand touch hand.

Away with funeral music — set
The pipe to powerful lips —
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.

(M ETAMORPH ., L IB. VI.)

Then Jove commanded the god Mercury
To float up Psyche from the earth. And she
Sprang at the first word, as the fountain springs,
And shot up bright and rustling through his wings.

(M ETAMORPH ., L IB. VI.)

And Psyche brought to Venus what was sent
By Pluto's spouse; the paler, that she went
So low to seek it, down the dark descent.

Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?

These long verandahs seem to be washed clean
of dust and noise;
whitewashed walls encircle monks' quarters
with roofs of turquoise tile.
I walk along slowly, chanting poems to myself as I go,
and the evening breeze blows the plantain leaves
into confused patterns.

At the lacquered table — my recent calligraphy
flows effortlessly;
time and again I wield my brush at the solitude
of my window.
But I am sorry to find that too much of a good thing
can become a burden,
as I sweat away, brushing fans of calligraphy for people!

Around the temple, pines and cedars —
nearly a hundred trees.
The bright color of a single flower penetrates the green.
The cool evening breeze fans it where it grows
beside the pond,
wafting its gentle fragrance across the water.