Short Poems

Ever since Uncle John Henry been dead
All of the women are wearin' red.
Dis yere hammer, nine-pound hammer,
Kill mah partner, kill John Henry,
Kill him dead.

Entering the Hall, she meets the new wife:
Leaving the gate, she runs into her former husband.
Words stick: she does not manage to say anything:
She presses her hands together and hesitates.
Agitates moon-like fan — sheds pearl-like tears —
Realizes she loves him just as much as ever:
That her present pain will never come to an end.

The Elephant is like a wall,
He is broad and very tall.
Upon his back we have a ride,
And swing and sway from side to side.

Each of us is like Balboa: once in all our lives do we,
Gazing from some tropic summit, look upon an unknown sea;

But upon the dreary morrow, every way our footsteps seek,
Rank and tangled vine and jungle block our pathway to the peak.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Drake, who the world hast conquered like a scroll,
Who saw'st the Arctic and Antarctic Pole,
If men were silent, stars would make thee known:
Phoebus forgets not his companion.

Down through the snow-drifts in the street
With blustering joy he steers;
His rubber boots are full of feet
And his tippet full of ears.

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

Deserted city, residence of Ch'en emperors,
age-old palace where southern sovereigns lived.
No garden rocks now fill the winding pool,
but stumps of ancient trees do still remain.
The audience chamber, now a Buddhist shrine:
barefoot monks glide to the gong and bell.
Nor do we know a thousand years from now
what further changes will have taken place.

The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas'd,
The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,
The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,
Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute;
(What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth's orbic scheme?)
Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,
The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.