English

The frog has legs, yes, but the bull stepped on him

The fragments were trying to huddle into one.
The cracks were trying to smile again.
The gun barrel was trying to rise, to sit again on the gun carriage.
All were dreaming of their fragile original shape.
With each wind, they were buried further in the sand.
Invisible ocean — bird of passage flashes.

For memories
I raise a moon cup
and toast.
But the white melancholy
still wore
the candlelike skin.
Beyond a cucumber garden
the noon sun was knocking
on a Chiangching tree.
I break off a branch,
and a sap raw-smelling as a skink
comes out.
Country people abhor it
as Medusa.
On memories' plate
Salome's black lips like fancy beads
quiver.
A tendril, severed by a memory,
trembles for fear in a bush
with a man.

Memories are twisted
as the Western man's pipe

A FOOL there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair —
(Even as you and I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!

A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent

From here, the quay, one looks above to mark
The bridge across the harbour, hanging dark
Against the day's-end sky, fair-green in glow
Over and under the middle archway's bow:
It draws its skeleton where the sun has set,
Yea, clear from cutwater to parapet;
On which mild glow, too, lines of rope and spar
Trace themselves black as char.

Down here in shade we hear the painters shift
Against the bollards with a drowsy lift,
As moved by the incoming stealthy tide.
High up across the bridge the burghers glide

For Life I had never cared greatly,
As worth a man's while;
Peradventures unsought,
Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
Unwon by its style.

In earliest years--why I know not--
I viewed it askance;
Conditions of doubt,
Conditions that leaked slowly out,
May haply have bent me to stand and to show not
Much zest for its dance.

With symphonies soft and sweet colour
It courted me then,
Till evasions seemed wrong,

For a moment pause: —
Just here it was;
And through the thin thorn hedge, by the rays of the moon,
I can see the tree in the field, and beside it the mound —
Now sheeted with snow — whereon we sat that June
When it was green and round,
And she crazed my mind by what she coolly told —
The history of her undoing,
(As I saw it), but she called " comradeship",
That bred in her no rueing:
And saying she'd not be bound
For life to one man, young, ripe-yeared, or old,

1

The fly or beetle on their track
Are things that know no sin
And when they whemble on their back
What terror they seem in
The shepherd boy wi' bits o' bents
Will turn them up again
And start them where they nimbly went
Along the grassy plain
And such the shepherd boy is found
While lying on the sun crackt ground.

2

The lady-bird that seldom stops
From climbing all the day
Climbs up the rushes tassle tops
Spreads wings and flies away
He sees them — lying on the grass

1

Flowers shall hang upon the pawls
Brighter than patterns upon shawls
And blossoms shall be in the coffin lids
Sadder than tears on greifs eyelids
Garlands shall hide pale corp[s]es faces
When beauty shall rot in charnel places
Spring flowers shall come in dews of sorrow
For the maiden goes down to her grave tomorrow.

2

Last week she went walking and stepping along
Gay as first flowers of spring or the tune of a song
Her eye was as bright as the sun in its calm

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;

I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleeplesss; and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away: