Short Poems

A wild sea-
In the distance over Sado
The Milky Way

A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife

Tyme's picture here invites your eyes,
See with how running wheeles it flyes!


These strings can do what no man could--
The tyme they fast in prison hold.

Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.

(He is Jealous of the Heavens and the Earth)

What a grudge I am bearing the earth that has its arms about her, and is holding that face away from me, where I was finding peace from great sadness.

What a grudge I am bearing the Heavens that are after taking her, and shutting her in with greediness, the Heavens that do push their bolt against so many.

I have forgotten her face once I loved.
I have forgotten her name once I recited in dream.
I have forgotten my love once I got mad for.
Forgotten all meat, all fish, all sweets and all cream.

What is love then, when it's lost forever?
What is life then, when it's frost forever?

A thousand times my Guru I asked:
'How shall the Nameless be defined?'
I asked and asked but all in vain.
The Nameless Unknown, it seems to me,
Is the source of the something that we see.

A thousand times I asked my guru,
'The name of the One who is known by No-thing',
Tired and exhausted was I, asking time and again;
Out of Nothing emerged Something, bewildering and great!

Sur sa nouvelle d' ' Arria Marcella '

Le creux d'un sein charmant que la cendre moula
Fut la coupe où tu bus cette ivresse éloquente,
Qui, sous l'étroit portique aux volutes d'acanthe,
Fit surgir dans la pourpre Arria Marcella.

Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper.
Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking.
Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages.
I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.