Short Poems

My funeral-shaft, and marble shapes that dwell
Beside it, and sad urn, receptacle
Of all I am, salute who seek thy tomb,
If from my own, or other cities come;
And say to them, a bride I hither came,
Tenos my country, Baucis was my name.
Say also, this inscription for her friend
Erinna, handmaid of the Muses, penned.

My foolish heart keeps beckoning to me
Portending hopes despite catastrophe
It does not know that my life's sun is setting —
No brief eclipse — but for eternity.
For those drawing near to death I said to them
To nurse delusive hopes is no wise fit
My springtime's done, and it was dark and clouded
Why should my autumn be by sunshine lit?

My Feet they haul me 'round the house:
— They hoist me up the Stairs:
I only have to steer them and
— They ride me everywheres.

My father owns the butcher shop,
My mother cuts the meat,
And I'm the little hot dog
That runs around the street.

Moon, worn thin to the width of a quill,
In the dawn clouds flying,
How good to go, light into light, and still
Giving light, dying.

My children! speak not ill of one another;
I do not ask you not to hate;
Cadets must envy every elder brother,
The little poet must the great.

The mountains cannot block this dreamlike song
of flowering plum;
playing away my homesickness — the springtime in this flute!
The night waters have no waves,
the crescent moon is out:
how many others are sleepless on the River Chi tonight?

The moon is the companion
of the Goddess of Wu Mountain;
the flowers are the neighbors of her lover,
Sung Yü;
they are as far apart as if the stars were in between!
" Had I known at the beginning the bitterness of parting
I would never have loved you! "

The moon comes from the blue sky,
falls into my cup of wine.
The wine finished, the moon disappears,
shining as always in the sky.

Moonlight in front of my bed--
I took it for frost on the ground!
I lift my eyes to watch the mountain moon,
lower them and dream of home.