Short Poems

We should not mind if on our ear there fell
Some less of cunning, more of oracle.

We see the planet fall,
And that is all.

Pain is impossible to describe
Pain is the impossibility of describing
Describing what is impossible to describe
Which must be a thing beyond description
Beyond description not to be known
Beyond knowing but not mystery
Not mystery but pain not plain but pain
But pain beyond but here beyond

Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can't mouse in

In the cemetery on North Hill
Heavy mist envelops the pines and cypresses
In Swallow Mansion
I sit quietly thinking of you.
Since you were buried
Your singers are scattered like dust.
And the red perfume in their red sleeves
Has faded away for ten years now.

Less than a day in paradise,
And a thousand years have passed among men.
While the pieces are still being laid on the board
All things have changed to emptiness
The woodman takes the road home,
The haft of his axe has rotted in the wind:
No thing is what it was but the stone bridge
Such panning a rainbow cinnabar-red.

A man said to the universe:
" Sir, I exist! "
" However, " replied the universe,
" The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation. "

Such near aspects had we
Of our life's scenery.

On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit
Just by old Paestum's temples and the perch
Where Time doth plume his wings.

Go, little book,
To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look
Into thy pages: it may hap that he
May find that golden maidens dance through thee.