Short Poems

Zhongnan, The Great One, so near the Celestial City,
Linked mount on mount to the sea.
White clouds, where I look back, close in
Green mists, when I approach, are gone
Its peak, the pivot of the constellations' change;
Its valleys deep, define both light and shade
I try to find a place to spend the night,
Across the stream, call to the woodcutter.

Most of these minor samurai draw a stipend of three koku —
So how come they act so big?
From head to toe, they're a mass of unmitigated gall
At the theater, they always get in — for free.

I look back — I do not see the ancients;
I look ahead — can't see the generations to come
I brood on the endlessness of Heaven and Earth,
And tears stream down — I stand alone.

When the night falls
the day starts to break
on the brothels.

Yoshiwara —
that's where a man goes to dump
all his better judgment.

Each time footsteps
approach, he puts it under
the Analects .

List to the forest-voice murmuring low:
All that it saw when alone with its laughter,
All that it suffered in times that came after,
Mournful it tells, that the wind may know.

The guy
who fears his wife

All he does at work:
count the number of hairs
in his lord's nostrils

Autumn going —
parting for Futami
a clam pried from its shell