Short Poems

The day my great-aunt Sarah died, how I remember well,
She lay alone with daffodils and never rang her bell.
She lay as quiet as her chair and books upon her shelf.
She gave no trouble to her nurse, no trouble to herself.
She was more quiet than the bare, ploughed fields that lay outside.
The knowledge in her listening face as certain was, and wide.

A summer mist
Enveloping those dark leaves
Perfumes the air
In my youth I saw
And did not see.

All day long
I don't say a word:
A butterfly casts its shadow.

And then one morning
surprised
I found myself
at the brink of wisdom
having forgotten love.

Alone
is better
nothing sadder
than two
depressed together.

If only I could write in the first person
I, a woman alone, off in a corner
If only I could write in the first person
Like this: I, I.

A home wants nothing when it has a good wife.
If such a woman is not found in the house,
Or if she is a woman who uses hard words,
The house is like a den where a tiger dwells.

If we bathe and garland our god and sing unto the name of this righteous god regularly,
There shall be no bad days in the land;
There shall be rain,—three showers a month.
Rice fields will be rich and swarm with fish.
Blossoms will be filled with honey and attract all kinds of insects.
Cows will be fat and big and give pots and pots of milk.
Thus the country will enjoy increasing riches.

She burst fierce wine
From the tough skin of pain,
Like wind that wrings from rigid skies
A scant and bitter gleam,
Long after the autumnal dusk
Has folded all the valleys in.

You are a poet, sycamore,
A minor poet.
You are not much good in a practical world;
You shed your ragged leaves early, and clutter up the landscape.
But you are lovely on winter evenings
Against the afterglow—
Bare and pale and a little disdainful,