Short Poems

" Best scene
in the whole play! "
(much blowing of noses)

The bird's call this morning was a fine bird call.
Twenty bushels an acre isn't at all a bad crop.
The good bird sang of eighteen bushels of rice.
The bird sang, deep at night—I had to tell my lord to go home.
Let's listen to that bird's auspicious call!

Beyond my sight, deep into the darkness, the anchor chain disappears on the face of the sea.
Beyond my sight, high into the darkness, the halyard escapes toward the mast.
My light is meager. It can only shine on my blind face.
Staring at me in the distance, in the darkness I cannot see, a gull called.

A suggestion of chill pervades the little bower,
The haze of dawn sulky as though it were deep autumn.
On the painted screen, thin mist hovering over a running brook —
A scene tranquil and serene.

Fallen petals flying at ease — ethereal like dreams;
Mizzling rain in an endless stream — fine as sorrow.
The jeweled curtain hung up idly on a little hook of silver.

Bone and Skin,
Two millers thin,
Would starve the town, or near it;--
But be it known
To Skin and Bone
That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.

Rain now stopped on the plain to the west,
It is all orioles and blossoms, charming in every way.
Green hills surround the city walls,
White birds burst through the stream's mist.
A little village there beyond its clear flow,
Gardens here at the front of the bright, rain-washed scene.
Thinking way back to those guests at Orchid Islet,
Wistfully I stroll through the sunset of this spring day.

Blue sky and bluer sea with its white teeth showing,
Gold dunes made sweet by yellow jasmine growing,
And over sand and sea a keen wind blowing.

Gray skies and grayer days and the years swift going,
Youth's golden dunes all white with winter's snowing . . .
And in my heart the bitter wind of memory blowing.

Grasses enclose the old palaces as waning sunlight shifts.
A lone wind-tossed cloud stops briefly: on what can it depend?
The view here, mountains and rivers, has never changed,
Yet the people within the city walls already are half gone.
The reed flowers that fill the land have grown old with me,
But into whose eaves have the swallows of my former home flown?
Now I depart on the road out of Chiang-nan;
Transformed into a weeping cuckoo, reeking of blood, I shall return.

Blow , wind, blow! and go, mill, go!
—That the miller may grind his corn;
That the baker may take it and into rolls make it,
—And send us some hot in the morn.

Blossoms of the plum
Gleam through fallen snow to-day.
Better let them stand!
I had gathered some for you —
But they melted in my hand.