There's no occasion for knocking at an out-of-the-way door;
What good fortune brings an old friend to tap at my thatch gate?
Set amidst hills, the house is half hidden in a mantle of moss;
Felled to serve as a bridge, the gnarled tree still puts forth new leaves.
Young bamboo shoots sprout in the gentle noonday breeze;
Drifting petals fall into my tea-stove by mistake.
Our feelings calm as water, the two of us sit relaxed
Facing each other in the woods,
Regaled with the birdsong of Spring.

1

He is gone,
Gone somewhere west of Feng-ch'eng.
A thin rain dampens my red sleeves,
New weeds lie as deep as my jade brows are low,
The butterfly is most bewildered.

2

He is gone,
Gone from the Isle of Egrets.
Lotus blossoms turn to emerald remorse,
Willow catkins rise to join the zither's grief,
Behind the brocade curtain — the early autumn startles.

3

He is gone,
Gone from the painted chamber tower.
No longer lustrous and beautiful, I sit idle,
Why bother about rouge powder and jade hairpin?

BROME, BROME ON HILL

Brome, brome on hill,
The gentle brome on hill, hill,
Brome, brome on Hive hill,
The gentle brome on Hive hill,
The brome stands on Hive hill-a.

BROME, BROME ON HILL

Brome, brome on hill,
The gentle brome on hill, hill,
Brome, brome on Hive hill,
The gentle brome on Hive hill,
The brome stands on Hive hill-a.

A BROKEN wagon wheel that rots away beside the river,
A sunken grave that dimples on the bluff above the trail;
The larks call, the wind sweeps, the prairie grasses quiver
And sing a wistful roving song of hoof and wheel and sail,
Pioneers, pioneers, you trailed it on to glory,
Across the circling deserts to the mountains blue and dim.
New England was a night camp; Old England was a story,
The new home, the true home, lay beyond the rim.

You fretted at the old hearth, the kettle and the cricket,

If someone came what would I do
dozing here with my clothes on
completely at ease, feeling frisky
human life? What can you say
rank is above me a bit
wealth, I don't need it
haha, you laugh
I laugh, haha.

out of chaos,
Chang Kuo-lao popped
riding his white ass backwards
through illusion
born in purple clouds
coiled in ruby mist
every night he folded that old ass up
swallowed it
to sleep in bliss.

I
Brocadós and Damasks, and Tabbies, and Gawzes,
Are, by Robert Ballentine, lately brought over,
With Forty Things more: now hear what the Law says,
Whoe'er will not wear them is not the King's Lover.
Though a Printer and Dean
Seditiously mean
Our true Irish hearts from old England to wean;
We'll buy English Silks for our Wives and our Daughters,
In Spight of his Deanship and Journeyman Waters.
II

In England the dead in Woollen are clad,
The Dean and his Printer then let us cry Fye on;

The parabola thrown
from the woman
to the hedge
is the lifeline of
a man who yearns for beautiful human solitude
The Greek goddesses too try to avoid
the line
At the end of December and into January
it gets extremely lonely here
The concrete road
as wide as the Champs-Elysées
runs beyond the racetrack thrown away toward Meguro
to Kakinokizaka
its backdrop a wonderful evening sun
the mountains of Sagami undulating black
If you saw this sunset sky
you would as I do
feel so lonely you'd be moved to tears for

Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there,
But wisdom shews a narrow path,
With here and there a traveller.

Deny thy-self, and take thy cross,
Is the Redeemer's great command!
Nature must count her gold but dross,
If she would gain this heavenly land.

The fearful soul that tires and faints,
And walks the ways of God no more,
Is but esteemed--almost a saint,
And makes his own destruction sure.

Lord, let not all my hopes be vain,
Create my heart entirely new;

The broad beach
Sea wind and the sea's irregular rhythm,
Great dunes with their pale grass, and on the beach
Driftwood, tangle of bones, an occasional shell,
Now coarse, now carven and delicate — whorls of time
Stranded in space, deaf ears listening
To lost time, old oceanic secrets.
Along the water's edge, in pattern casual
As the pattern of the stars, the pin-point air holes
Left by the sand flea under the receding spume,
Wink and blink out again. A gull drifts over,
Wide wings crucified against the sky —