Short Poems

If you find a paddling pool,
Dabble your toes to make them cool.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
Kick up your feet and scatter the spray,
Oh what fun for a bright sunny day!
Splash! Splash! Splash!

If you ever, ever, ever meet a grizzly bear,
You must never, never, never ask him where
He is going,
Or what he is doing;
For if you ever, ever dare
To stop a grizzly bear,
You will never meet another grizzly bear.

The Arhat has left the dust, no more desire.
Playful games at the brothel, so much desire.
This one is bad, this one is good.
The monk's skill. Devil-Buddha desire.

The temples are wealthy but the Gozan are declining;
there are only false masters, there are no true masters.
I would like to pick up a pole and become a fisherman,
but these days, on the lakes and seas, a contrary wind blows.

If this was our battle, if these were our ends,
Which were our enemies, which were our friends!

That old master's single phrase is worth a thousand gold pieces,
Do no evil, do much good.
It must have been something the Elder sang while drunk.

I was buried near this Dike
That my Friends may weep as much as they like

I WANDER down on Clinton street south of Polk
And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling.
It is a cataract of coloratura
And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusations.

I sit with my wine — there's no singing or dancing.
I just watch the sky, chanting poems out loud.
The works of the T'ang masters are piled on my desk:
half of them are poems about chaos and separation.

I sit here long, the lamp burns dim;
sound of rain, swept by the wind past my house.
The tears of the banana leaves, outside the window:
for whom are they falling tonight?