Short Poems

News at this far western station! The north has been recaptured!
At first I cannot check the tears from pouring on my coat —
Where is my wife? Where are my sons?
Yet crazily sure of finding them, I pack my books and poems —
And loud my song and deep my drink
On the green spring-day that starts me home,
Back from this mountain, past another mountain,
Up from the south, north again — to my own town!

In a subway car
I saw a girl reading the New Republic ,
Her long dark lashes
Were bent above an article
Called " The Surplus Woman. "
She was temptingly beautiful
And she smiled upon the text
With gentle assurance and security.

Yellow chrysanthemums, white chrysanthemums; —
Would there were no more names than these!

Aye! New Year's day, with a clear sky,
And conversation among the sparrows!

I met you often when you were visiting princes
And when you were playing in noblemen's halls.
... Spring passes. . . . Far down the river now,
I find you alone under falling petals.

Faring far across the river-narrow of Ching-men
I have come with you into the land of Chu.
Here ends the mountain-range that stretches along the plain,
While the river flowing on, enters the distant heavens.
Now under the moon like a mirror flying through the sky,
And the rising clouds that build palaces and towers,
I bid you farewell. Ten thousand li you sail away,
But it is the waters of the home river that bear you on.

At dawn I left the walled city of White King,
Towering among the many colored clouds;
And came down stream in a day
One thousand li to Chiang-ling.
The screams of monkeys on either bank
Had scarcely ceased echoing in my ear
When my skiff had left behind it
Ten thousand ranges of hills.

In the bright moonlight what appeared
Like flowers is a cotton field.

In the deserted garden among the crumbling walls
The willows show green again,
While the sweet notes of the water-nut song
Seem to lament the spring.
Nothing remains but the moon above the river —
The moon that once shone on the fair faces
That smiled in the king's palace of Wu.

The breeze passes through the lotus flowers —
All fragrance is the waterside pavilion.
The king of Wu is feasting on the Ku-su Tower.
Hsi-shih, the queen, flushed with wine, dances —
She is fair and unresisting.
Now, smiling, she leans near the east window
Against a couch of white jade.