Short Poems

Every evening when night retrieves the substance of our longings,
the bird of yearning steals out of my body,
departs alone toward San " aa,
returns just before daybreak,
eyes wounded by the dust of separation,
in the heart a bloodied face,
vessels filled with the ashes of tenderness.

To Frankfort I on Schobbas came,
Where dumplings were my food.
They have the best religion there:
Goose-giblets, too, are good.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,
The joys I have possess'd, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Dam up the water
to make lodging for moonlight,
summer is no more.

Ingots of silver,
stacks of them
packed in boxes,
stoutly corded,
raced off by horseback

Sending up billows
of black smoke,
they smelt the ore,
never resting till
the silver avalanche tumbles down

Soaked in sluices
fed from valley streams,
it yields up silver dew
that trickles through the fingers

Deafening noise!
treadling pestles,
pounding the lumps of earth
that glint and shine,
turning them to powder

Stark naked,
the men crowd forward,
flailing hammers
to smash

Deep in mountain caves
where no sun rays reach
they enter,
torches flaming
digging our metal