Short Poems

the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
and it was a man from Denver:

When famed Varelst this little wonder drew,
Flora vouchsafed the growing works to view;
Finding the painter's science at a stand,
The goddess snatch'd the pencil from his hand,
And finishing the piece, she smiling said,
Behold one work of mine that ne'er shall fade.

a flickering candle~
my shadow dances
on the wall

How graceful the picture! the life, the repose!
The sunbeam that plays on the porchstone wide;
And the shadow that fleets o'er the stream that flows,
And the soft blue sky with the hill's green side.

A field of cotton--
as if the moon
had flowered.


Translated by Robert Hass

Her nature is the sea's, that smiles to-night
A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light;
The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails,
Forgetful of the fury of her gales;
To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars,
And o'er his hapless wreck the flood she pours!

Who know thee, love: thy life be such
That, ere the year be o'er,
Each one who loves thee now so much,
Even God, may love thee more!

The lightning and thunder
They go and they come:
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.

With my wine-bottle, watching by river and lake
For a lady so tiny as to dance on my palm,
I awake, after dreaming ten years in Yangzhou,
Known as fickle, even in the Street of Blue Houses.

To meet, to know, to love--and then to part,
Is the sad tale of many a human heart.