Short Poems

A bee upon a briar-rose hung
And wild with pleasure suck'd and kiss'd;
A flesh-fly near, with snout in dung,
Sneer'd, "What a Transcendentalist!"

Because you are to me a song
I must not sing you over-long.

Because you are to me a prayer
I cannot say you everywhere.

Because you are to me a rose —
You will not stay when summer goes.

Thinking only of their vow that they would crush the Tartars —
On the desert, clad in sable and silk, five thousand of them fell. . . .
But arisen from their crumbling bones on the banks of the river at the border,
Dreams of them enter, like men alive, into rooms where their loves lie sleeping.

Because I am idolatrous and have besought,
With grievous supplication and consuming prayer,
The admirable image that my dreams have wrought
Out of her swan's neck and her dark, abundant hair:
The jealous gods, who brook no worship save their own,
Turned my live idol marble and her heart to stone.

A BEAM of light, from the infinite depths of the midnight sky,
Painted with infinite love a star in a convict's eye;
When, lo! the ghosts of his sins were afraid and fled with a curse,
And the soul of the man walked free in the fields of the universe!

The baby moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers.
O foxes, baby moon, runners, you are the panel of memory, fire-white writing tonight of the Red Man's dreams.
Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look against the moon-face, the star-faces, of the West?

At this remote village, I have no neighbors.
In my thatched house, late at night: rain.
A dog barks somewhere out in the fields.
The cook whispers softly in the kitchen.

At the top of this ridge I could whistle happily.
Down at the bottom — I'm feeling depressed!
Looking back now at the thousand peaks:
there — the one lost in the clouds is Mount Lo-fu.

At night they pound the vermilion newt
and stamens of buttercup;
her ten finger-tips, all transformed
into red gosling beaks.
A leisurely moment — just one tune
she plays on the jade lute:
several petals of flowering peach
float upon the waters.

At her step the water-hen
Springs from her nook, and skimming the clear stream,
Ripples its waters in a sinuous curve,
And dives again in safety.