Short Poems

FROM THE ZUNI AMERICAN INDIAN

Locust, locust, playing a flute,
 Locust, locust, playing a flute!
Away up on the pine-tree bough,
  Closely clinging,
 Playing a flute,
 Playing a flute!

Cowards fear to Die, but Courage stout,
Rather than Live in Snuff, will be put out.

Covered with snow, the herd, with none to guide,
Came to the stall adown the mountain side;
For, ah! Therimachus beneath an oak
Slept the long sleep, from which he ne'er awoke,
Sent to his slumber by the lightning's stroke.

The Common Cormorant or shag
Lays eggs inside a paper bag.
The reason you will see no doubt
It is to keep the lightning out.
But what these unobservant birds
Have never noticed is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs
Come
home.

Come forth, old lion, from thy den,
Come, be the gaze of idle men,
Old lion, shake thy mane and growl,
Or they will take thee for an owl.

Cloud and water, lonely, desolate:
where now is the flute's voice coming from?
Sighing, sighing—full of autumn thoughts;
unawares come feelings of separation.
Chilly moonlight on water by the tower;
west wind in the city on the river.
What need now to hear the Wu-ch'i Song
with its bitter resentment at southern journeys?

Close keep your lips, if that you meane
To be accounted inside cleane:
For if you cleave them, we shall see
There in your teeth much Leprosie.

Her work was to count linings —
the day's seconds in dozens.

Come, let's to bed,
Says Sleepy-head;
Sit up awhile, says Slow;
Hang on the pot,
Says Greedy-gut,
Let's sup before we go.