Short Poems

Is there no moon?
Is the spring
not the spring of the past?
I alone
am as I was . . . . With the first faint glow of dawn, he went home, still weeping.

I spent the night
neither awake
nor yet asleep
and the day gazing at the rain
thinking of spring.

Like the high fanning tufts on swift horses
grows the white blossom of the cane
in his country of cool rivers.

And his women,
O they know nothing of sleep
even in the cosy small houses
of that sleepy town.

Bless you, friend. Listen.
Sweeter than milk
mixed with honey from our gardens
is the leftover water in his land,
low in the waterholes
covered with leaves
and muddied by animals.

And all those horses
our man of the tall hills
comes riding on
have tufts of hair
like the brahman urchins

The vines of the tokoro
crawl around
among the rice stems,
the rice stems in the rice paddies
bordering on the tomb.

To turn your thoughts
from matters of no importance,
it is best
to drink a single cup
of cloudy unfiltered sake.

" SON OF A WITCH "

Son of a witch,
Mayst thou die in a ditch,
With the butchers who back thy quarrels;
And rot above ground,
While the world shall resound
A welcome to Royal King Charles.

" WIDOWED WIFE AND WEDDED MAID "

Widowed wife and wedded maid,
Betrothed, betrayer, and betrayed,
All is done that has been said;
Vanda's wrong hath been y-wroken:
Take her pardon by this token.

12 Saturday, 16 December 1752

Magnum pauperies opprobrium jubet
Quidvis aut facere aut pati.
Hor. [Od. III xxiv 42 3]

He whom the dread of want ensnares,
With baseness acts, with meanness bears.