East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
                                        looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
                      I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
                 Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
                                         up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

No moon is in the heaven,
No wind over the earth.
No voice comes from mankind,
No heart is left in me.
The universe might be death,
Human life might be sleep.
The golden thread of my love springing up and up and up, 
One end hangs on the eyebrow, one is hanging on the few little stars;
A vision of Madonna comes, even her shadows hid,
In one hand she holds a yellow gold sword,
in one hand she plucks the flower of paradise.
Ah! Ah! the golden thread of my love and the vision of Madonna
clasp two hands amidst the tears.
Who would know that this is the suicide of love?
The universe might be death. 
Human life might be tears.
If human life be tears,
Death might be love.

고적한 밤

하늘에는 달이 없고 땅에는 바람이 없습니다 
사람들은 소리가 없고 나는 마음이 없습니다

우주는 죽음인가요 
인생은 잠인가요

한 가닥은 눈썹에 걸치고 한 가닥은 작은 별에 걸쳤던 님 생각의 금실은 살살살 걷힙니다 
한 손에는 황금의 칼을 들고 한 손으로 천국의 꽃을 꺽던 환상의 여왕도 그림자를 감추었습니다 
아아 님 생각의 금실과 환상의 여왕이 두 손을 마주 잡고 눈물의 속에서 정사한 줄이야 누가 알아요

우주는 죽음인가요 
인생은 눈물인가요 
인생이 눈물이면 
죽음은 사랑인가요

<sup>translated from the Chinese by Florence Wheelock Ayscough

A number of young gentlemen of rank, accompanied by singing-girls, go out to enjoy the cool of evening. They encounter a shower of rain.</sup>

                                             I

How delightful, at sunset, to loosen the boat! 
A light wind is slow to raise waves. 
Deep in the bamboo grove, the guests linger;
The lotus-flowers are pure and bright in the cool evening air. 
The young nobles stir the ice-water;
The Beautiful Ones wash the lotus-roots, whose fibres are like silk threads. 
A layer of clouds above our heads is black. 
It will certainly rain, which impels me to write this poem. 

                                             II

The rain comes, soaking the mats upon which we are sitting. 
A hurrying wind strikes the bow of the boat. 
The rose-red rouge of the ladies from Yüeh is wet;
The Yen beauties are anxious about their kingfisher-eyebrows. 
We throw out a rope and draw in to the sloping bank. We tie the boat to the willow-trees. 
We roll up the curtains and watch the floating wave-flowers. 
Our return is different from our setting out. The wind whistles and blows in great gusts. 
By the time we reach the shore, it seems as though the Fifth Month were Autumn. 

^{translated from the Chinese by Marilyn Chin}

In the eighth month of autumn high angry winds howl   
Blowing three layers of thatch off my humble house   
The thatch fly over the river, scattering shards
Some pieces soar so high they hang on treetops
Some plummet down to earth covering ditches and pools      
A gang of hoodlums from the southern village appear
They bully me ruthlessly, but I’m too old and weak to fight    
They dare to rob me in front of my face          
Then grab the spoils and run into the bamboo wilds
Mouth parched, lips burning, I shout after them in vain  
I feel defeated, slump against my cane, and heave a deep sigh       
The winds finally calm down, the clouds turn dark as ink
The autumn sky is hovering ominously, slowly turning black
My old worn cotton quilt feels as cold as iron
My dear children sleep poorly, thrashing and ripping the covers 
Bed after bed is soaked, the roof is dripping, no room is dry 
The rain batters us endlessly, falling as heavy as hemp    
I am lost in chaos and misery and can barely sleep a wink
Such a damn long night—I am soaked and exhausted, I cry out, “Why?”
If I could build a grand palace with a thousand, ten-thousand rooms
   A safe-house standing on a hill so strong that violent storms can’t destroy
   If I could shelter all the impoverished poets and scholars under heaven    
   Offer them a gathering place of peace and joy—
If I could hold this spectacular vision in my eyes
Then I would gladly freeze to death in my lonely broken home   

茅屋為秋風所破歌

八月秋高風怒號
卷我屋上三重茅
茅飛度江灑江郊
高者掛罥長林梢
下者飄轉沉塘坳
南村群童欺我老無力
忍能對面為盜賊
公然抱茅入竹去
唇焦口燥呼不得
歸來倚杖自嘆息
俄頃風定雲墨色
秋天漠漠曏昏黑
布衾多年冷似鐵
驕兒惡臥踏裏裂
床床屋漏無干處
雨腳如麻未斷絕
自經喪亂少睡眠
長夜沾濕何由徹
安得廣廈千萬間
大庇天下寒士俱歡顏
風雨不動安如山
嗚呼何時眼前突兀見此屋
吾廬獨破受凍死亦足

in Ramallah
the ancients play chess in the starry sky
the endgame flickers
a bird locked in a clock
jumps out to tell the time

in Ramallah
the sun climbs over the wall like an old man
and goes through the market
throwing mirror light on
a rusted copper plate

in Ramallah
gods drink water from earthen jars
a bow asks a string for directions
a boy sets out to inherit the ocean
from the edge of the sky

in Ramallah
seeds sown along the high noon
death blossoms outside my window
resisting, the tree takes on a hurricane’s
violent original shape

I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do.
Confuse me, ovulate me,

spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient
date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon,

I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to
swoon at your questionable light,

you had me chasing you,
the world’s worst lover, over and over

hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight.
But you disappear for nights on end

with all my erotic mysteries
and my entire unconscious mind.

How long do I try to get water from a stone?
It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.

Better off alone. I’m going to write hard
and fast into you moon, face-fucking.

Something you wouldn’t understand.
You with no swampy sexual

promise but what we glue onto you.
That's not real. You have no begging

cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch
sucked. No lacerating spasms

sending electrical sparks through the toes.
Stars have those.

What do you have? You’re a tool, moon.
Now, noon. There’s a hero.

The obvious sun, no bulls hit, the enemy
of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures.

But my lovers have never been able to read
my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct.

It’s hard to learn that, hard to do.
The sun is worth ten of you.

You don't hold a candle
to that complexity, that solid craze.

Like an animal carcass on the road at night,
picked at by crows,

haunting walkers and drivers. Your face
regularly sliced up by the moving

frames of car windows. Your light is drawn,
quartered, your dreams are stolen.

You change shape and turn away,
letting night solve all night’s problems alone.

(I)

Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.

[translated by William Carlos Williams]

(II)

Night on the Great River

We anchor the boat alongside a hazy island.
As the sun sets I am overwhelmed with nostalgia.
The plain stretches away without limit.
The sky is just above the tree tops.
The river flows quietly by.
The moon comes down amongst men.

[translated by Kenneth Rexroth]

(III)

Mooring on Chien-te River

The boat rocks at anchor by the misty island
Sunset, my loneliness comes again.
In these vast wilds the sky arches down to the trees.
In the clear river water, the moon draws near.

[translated by Gary Snyder]

^{translated from the Chinese by Florence Wheelock Ayscough and Amy Lowell}

Every time I have started for the Yellow Flower River,
I have gone down the Blue-Green Stream, 
Following the hills, making ten thousand turnings,
We go along rapidly, but advance scarcely one hundred li.
We are in the midst of a noise of water,
Of the confused and mingled sounds of water broken by stones,
And in the deep darkness of pine trees.
Rocked, rocked,
Moving on and on, 
We float past water-chestnuts
Into a still clearness reflecting reeds and rushes.
My heart is clean and white as silk; it has already achieved Peace;
It is smooth as the placid river.
I love to stay here, curled up on the rocks, 
Dropping my fish-line forever.

Those canyons are too narrow to travel.
How will you make your way there, when

it’s a mere bird-path—a thousand miles
and gibbons howling all day and night?

We offer travel-spirits wine, then you’re
gone: Nü-lang Shrine, mountain forests

and beyond. But we still share a radiant
moon. And do you hear a nightjar there?

I’m here, on the dark porch, restyled in my mother’s chair.
10:45 and no moon.
Below the house, car lights
Swing down, on the canyon floor, to the sea.

In this they resemble us,
Dropping like match flames through the great void
Under our feet.
In this they resemble her, burning and disappearing.

Everyone’s gone
And I’m here, sizing the dark, saving my mother’s seat.

for Coleman Hawkins

The structure of landscape is infinitesimal,
Like the structure of music,
                            seamless, invisible.
Even the rain has larger sutures.
What holds the landscape together, and what holds music together,
Is faith, it appears—faith of the eye, faith of the ear.
Nothing like that in language,
However, clouds chugging from west to east like blossoms
Blown by the wind.
                 April, and anything’s possible.

Here is the story of Hsuan Tsang.
A Buddhist monk, he went from Xian to southern India
And back—on horseback, on camel-back, on elephant-back, and on 
                                                               foot.
Ten thousand miles it took him, from 629 to 645, 
Mountains and deserts, 
In search of the Truth,
                    the heart of the heart of Reality,
The Law that would help him escape it,
And all its attendant and inescapable suffering.
                                               And he found it.

These days, I look at things, not through them,
And sit down low, as far away from the sky as I can get.
The reef of the weeping cherry flourishes coral,
The neighbor’s back porch light bulbs glow like anemones.
Squid-eyed Venus floats forth overhead.
This is the half hour, half-light, half-dark,
                            when everything starts to shine out,
And aphorisms skulk in the trees,
Their wings folded, their heads bowed.

Every true poem is a spark,
              and aspires to the condition of the original fire
Arising out of the emptiness.
It is that same emptiness it wants to reignite.
It is that same engendering it wants to be re-engendered by.
Shooting stars.
April’s identical,
             celestial, wordless, burning down.
Its light is the light we commune by.
Its destination’s our own, its hope is the hope we live with.

Wang Wei, on the other hand, 
Before he was 30 years old bought his famous estate on the Wang River 
Just east of the east end of the Southern Mountains,
                                                     and lived there,
Off and on, for the rest of his life.
He never travelled the landscape, but stayed inside it,
A part of nature himself, he thought.
And who would say no
To someone so bound up in solitude,
                           in failure, he thought, and suffering.

Afternoon sky the color of Cream of Wheat, a small 
Dollop of butter hazily at the western edge.
Getting too old and lazy to write poems,
                                      I watch the snowfall
From the apple trees.
Landscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation.

While jogging on the treadmill at the gym,
that exercise in getting nowhere fast,
I realized we need a health pandemic.
Obesity writ large no more, Alzheimer's
forgotten, we could live carefree again.
We'd chant the painted shaman's sweaty oaths,
We'd kiss the awful relics of the saints,
we'd sip the bitter tea from twisted roots,
we'd listen to our grandmothers' advice.
We'd understand the moonlight's whispering.
We'd exercise by making love outside, 
and afterwards, while thinking only of
how much we'd lived in just one moment's time,
forgive ourselves for wanting something more:
to praise the memory of long-lost need,
or not to live forever in a world 
made painless by our incurable joy.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

If you were a love, you would love me, but every night
   outside the window you make the sound of footsteps alone;
     without once entering you go back. Is that love?

But never once have I made footsteps outside love’s window.
Perhaps love stays in the lover alone.
Ah! ah! but if there had been no sound of footsteps,
   the dream would not have been startled awake,
      it would have continued to mount into the clouds, seeking you.

꿈 깨고서

님이면은 나를 사랑하련마는 밤마다 문밖에 와서 발자취소리만 내이고 한번도 들어오지 아니하고 도로 가니 그것이 사랑인가요 
그러나 나는 발자취나마 님의 문밖에 가본 적이 없습니다 
아마 사랑은 님에게만 있나봐요 

아아 발자취소리나 아니더면 꿈이나 아니깨었으련마는 
꿈은 님을 찾아가려고 구름을 탔었어요

       I hear you call, pine tree, I hear you upon the hill, by the silent                 pond
where the lotus flowers bloom, I hear you call, pine tree.
       What is it you call, pine tree, when the rain falls, when the                       winds
blow, and when the stars appear, what is it you call, pine tree?
       I hear you call, pine tree, but I am blind, and do not know                         how to
reach you, pine tree. Who will take me to you, pine tree?

At night the Universe grows lean, sober-
faced, of intoxication,
The shadow of the half-sphere curtains
down closely against my world, like a 
doorless cage, and the stillness chained by
wrinkled darkness strains throughout the Uni-
verse to be free. 
Listen, frogs in the pond, (the world is a pond itself)
     cry out for the light, for the truth!
The curtains rattle ghostlily along, bloodily biting
     my soul, the winds knocking on my cabin door
     with their shadowy hands.

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the world seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where nature was most plain and pure.
He first enclosed within the garden's square
A dead and standing pool of air,
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
Which stupefied them while it fed.
The pink grew then as double as his mind:
The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,
And flowers themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip, white, did for complexion seek,
And learned to interline its cheek;
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
That one was for a meadow sold.
Another world was searched, through oceans new,
To find the marvel of Peru.
And yet these rarities might be allowed,
To man, that sovereign thing, and proud,
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it came;
He grafts upon the wild the tame,
That the uncertain and adulterate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
Lest any tyrant him outdo,
And in the cherry he does nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
'Tis all enforced—the fountain and the grot—
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence,
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till
More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues, polished by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand,
But how so'er the figures do excel,
The gods themselves with us do dwell.

I don’t want to be surrounded by people. Or even one person. But I don’t want to always be alone. 

The answer is to become my own pet, hungry for plenty in a plentiful place. 

There is no true solitude, only only. 

At seaside, I have that familiar sense of being left out, too far to glean the secret: how go in?

What an inhuman surface the sea has, always open.

I’m too afraid to go in. I give no yes.

Full of shame, but refuse to litter ever. I pick myself up.

Wind has power. Sun has power. What is power’s source?

                       *                                   *                                  *

There’s no privacy outside. We’ve invaded it. 

There is no life outside empire.  All paradise is performance for people who pay. 

Perhaps I’m an invader and feel I haven’t paid. 

What a waste, to have lost everything in mind.

                       *                                   *                                  *

Watching three mom-like women try to go in, I’m green—I want to join them.  

But they are not my women.  I join them, apologizing. 

They splash away from me—they’re their pod. People are alien. 

I’m an unknown story, erasing myself with seawater. 

There goes my honey and fog, my shoulders and legs.

                       *                                   *                                  *

What could be queerer than this queer tug-lust for what already is, who already am, but other of it?

Happens? That kind of desire anymore? 

Oh I am that queer thing pulling and greener than the blue sea. I’m new with envy. 

Beauty washing over itself. No reflection. No claim. Nothing to see. 

If there’s anything bluer than the ocean it’s its greenness. It’s its turquoise blood, mixing me.

                       *                                   *                                  *

I was a woman alone in the sea. 

Don’t tell anybody, I tell myself.

Don’t try to remember this. Don’t document it.  

Remember: write down to not-document it.