You do not seem to realise that beauty is a liability rather than
   an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing
     that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp,
   conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt through sheer
   reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us
     think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it
   is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. You would look, minus
thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere

peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew
   but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the
     infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
   the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you.

                               for Lucie Brock-Broido
 

            I was there at the edge of Never,
of Once Been, bearing the night’s hide
 

            stretched across the night sky,
awake with myself disappointing myself,
 

            armed, legged & torsoed in the bed,
my head occupied by enemy forces,
 

            mind not lost entire, but wandering
off the marked path ill-advisedly. This March
 

            Lucie upped and died, and the funny show
of her smoky-throated world began to fade. 
 

            I didn’t know how much of me was made
by her, but now I know that this spooky art
 

            in which we staple a thing
to our best sketch of a thing was done
 

            under her direction, and here I am
at 4 AM, scratching a green pen over a notebook
 

             bound in red leather in October.
It’s too warm for a fire. She’d hate that.
 

             And the cats appear here only as apparitions
I glimpse sleeping in a chair, then
 

             Wohin bist du entschwunden? I wise up,
know their likenesses are only inked
 

             on my shoulder’s skin, their chipped ash poured
in twin cinerary jars downstairs. Gone
 

             is gone, said the goose to the shrunken boy
in the mean-spirited Swedish children’s book
 

             I love. I shouldn’t be writing this
at this age or any other. She mothered
 

             a part of me that needed that, lit
a spirit-lantern to spin shapes inside
 

             my obituary head, even though—
I’m nearly certain now—she’s dead.

On summer afternoons I sit
Quiescent by you in the park
And idly watch the sunbeams gild
And tint the ash-trees’ bark.

Or else I watch the squirrels frisk
And chaffer in the grassy lane;
And all the while I mark your voice
Breaking with love and pain.

I know a woman who would give
Her chance of heaven to take my place;
To see the love-light in your eyes,
The love-glow on your face!

And there’s a man whose lightest word
Can set my chilly blood afire;
Fulfillment of his least behest
Defines my life’s desire.

But he will none of me, nor I
Of you. Nor you of her. ’Tis said
The world is full of jests like these.—
I wish that I were dead.

^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

A cloud of flowers!
Is the bell Uyeno
Or Asakusa?

When I am dead, my dearest,
    Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
    Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
    With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
    And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
   I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
   Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
    That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
    And haply may forget.