Short Poems

In the southern land many birds sing;
Of towns and cities half are unwalled.
The country markets are thronged by wild tribes;
The mountain-villages bear river-names.
Poisonous mists rise from the damp sands;
Strange fires gleam through the night-rain.
And none passes but the lonely fisher of pearls
Year by year on his way to the South Sea.

Traces of the famous Konparu Zenchiku,
blowing the flute, singing on the stage, moonlight flowing bright,
before one's eyes, the charm of Komachi's mask,
Captain Fukakusa's dark spirit — his father's embodiment.

In the family drinking well
Willie pushed his sister Nell.
She's there yet, because it kilt her —
Now we have to buy a filter.

In the encyclopedia
Are facts on which you can't improve.
As: " The clitoris is present
In all mammals. Sometimes, as in
The female hyena, it is

In nineteen years, we have parted, and met;
now I meet you, part from you again —
how heavy the feeling!
We brew tea, and sweep the ground
to share with the moonlight,
face each other, and play our lute
until the bells of dawn.

In former years I passed this city
and met an old man from Chiang-nan.
His body was aged, his mind, sad, but at peace:
I wonder if he is still here?

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and hawser'd tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.

In Se'enteen Hunder 'n Forty-Nine
The Deil gat stuff to mak a swine,
An' coost it in a corner;
But wilily he chang'd his plan,
An' shap'd it something like a man,
An' ca'd it Andrew Turner.

In late sun, the beauty of river and hill;
on spring wind, fragrance of grass and flower;
where mud is soft the swallows fly;
where sands are warm the mandarin ducks doze.

In the beginning the Great Spirit gave the prairie rare gifts:
The mirage, the warm rains of springtime, the grasses and the flowers;
The buffalo, the village by the river and the children basking in the sun.
Happy were we then, O, my people!
But from the East a white warrior came and with a mighty arrow wounded the prairie;
And the grasses and the flowers withered and the herds and villages melted away —
Melted, O, my people! as the snow melts before the Chinook.