Short Poems

On leaves fallen
but not yet turned —
autumn showers.

Cry out, then, cry —
crickets in the heavy dew
of Fukakusa.

Here we are
alreadyÔÇÆon the day
autumn ends.

As Jacob served seven years
For dark-eyed Rachel, and the long years seemed
Nought for the love he bare her as they gleamed
Past, full of spring's wild tears
And summer's passion,—so it seems to me
That I have, through strange suffering, served for thee
Not seven years as decreed
But seventy times seven years, and more indeed!

Inward lush unpetaling purpose in pink blooms of sleep, and I no longer needed to be separate. I was living there then, at the edge of the sea. And my friends came to visit, trying for a baby, not sure how to read me on that island of dozy sunlight. And there it was: familiarity edged with fear, the way we" d feed each other sandwiches and wonder if we should have wanted something other. We walked the folded cliffs over conifer fronds and mud runneling rocks slick with dropped fruit and rotting camellias to pause at the first ridge.

Full of strength and laced
with fragility:

the thoroughbred,
the hummingbird,
and all things
cursed
with agility.

What every painter knows, but most others forget
is how bright colors dim in artificial light

and lobster tastes most fresh
the nearer to death
you set your teeth into the lobster"s flesh.

A starlit forest"s
photosynthesis: slight surge —
sugar to the root.

*

Weigh odds. Pray. Pay bills.
Tell truth. Love well. Serve real gods.
Meanwhile, daffodils.

*

O my good! O my beautiful! Atrocious fanfare where I won"t stumble! enchanted rack whereon I am stretched! Hurrah for the amazing work and the marvelous body, for the first time! It began amid the laughter of children, it will end with it. This poison will remain in all our veins even when, as the trumpets turn back, we"ll be restored to the old discord. O let us now, we who are so deserving of these torments! let us fervently gather up that superhuman promise made to our created body and soul: that promise, that madness! Elegance, knowledge, violence!