Short Poems

The gifts of Heaven to you and me have not been equal.
You play your table-lute even when it is stringless,
With the movement of your hands drawing forth the five-coloured sounds which delight you.
Your Unworthy One is dull,
She hears only what is.
I beg you, therefore, my Lord,
Speak the words which I am fain to believe abide in your heart.

Why does my clock persist in marking the hour after that which it is?
Scornful clock!
Do you wish to remind me that there is never any present,
Only a future and a long, long past?

On an evening of black snow
I walked along the causeway,
Wishing that I too might melt
Between the agitated fingers
Of a stuttering, intolerable sea.

On the roadside,
in the light
shining all around,
he looks upward —
a traveler
standing there,
while somewhere
waits a friend.

Horses whinny,
cocks crow,
as travelers
rise and go away —
the village
overflowing
with the sound
of their voices.

Below the mountain,
in the rain
of evening,
doves are calling —
all in a row
on branches
darkened by engulfing clouds.

Unforgettable
is the image
that from my eyes
descends in tears —
showering onto
my sleeves
with moonlight
at break of day.

As if to say —
" Isn't it true
for men, as well:
that the more the words,
the less
they are of value? " —
the cuckoo does not call again.

No one
remains now
for me to spend my time with —
I who
in the past
was known to spurn
the company
of those who had grown old.

It started to burn,
but the firewood
of my passion
has rotted through.
Now I wait
in the dying dusk
for the smoke