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.

Fall fell wind-wise today—
trembles of dried lilac stalks, dead
hydrangea that couldn’t reach
water, all the finches and wrens
boldly on the move. Fall fell, my friend.
It ended summer like the last page
of the last chapter of your life.
What can I do about the turbulent
underneaths impossible to tamp down—
my yard stripped to incidentals—
sifted and judged, rearranged?
If work is sacred, as we both believed,
it also exacts a tax: the rake’s
black splinter in the heel
of my thumb, a few new blisters.
I still can’t accept life’s abandon,
how the leaves are our lives
and not at the same time,
or that the fence, its posts bearing
so much weight, are a symbol
of my own manhood
beginning to rot. I’m sorry if some
of these images aren’t tried and true.
The best pictures I’ll ever make
(and man, I wish I could text them to you)
were taken today in my yard,
my finger touching a white digital button
to capture some delight amidst
death itself, Olivia hiding inside
the great mound we gathered
despite the whipping wind, her face
bursting with joy—as she emerged
from our quarry and kicked
the leaves out, as she tossed up armfuls.

1 
My mother always called it a nest, 
the multi-colored mass harvested

from her six daughters’ brushes, 
and handed it to one of us

after she had shaped it, as we sat in front 
of the fire drying our hair.

She said some birds steal anything, a strand 
of spider’s web, or horse’s mane,

the residue of sheep’s wool in the grasses 
near a fold

where every summer of her girlhood 
hundreds nested.

Since then I’ve seen it for myself, their genius—
how they transform the useless.

I’ve seen plastics stripped and whittled 
into a brilliant straw,

and newspapers—the dates, the years—
supporting the underweavings.


2 
As tonight in our bed by the window 
you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean

the brush as my mother did, offering 
the nest to the updraft.

I’d like to think it will be lifted as far 
as the river, and catch in some white sycamore,

or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets, 
the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects

lay their eggs. 
Would this constitute an afterlife?

The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks 
off islands they called paradise,

stood in the early sunlight 
cutting their hair. And the rare

birds there, nameless, almost extinct, 
came down around them

and cleaned the decks 
and disappeared into the trees above the sea.

I know it to be true that those who live
As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.

But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
Spins into complex patterns and conceals
His huge invention with forms intricate.

Each generation blindly fills the plan,
A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
With many processes from out the sod,
The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.

We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.

We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
We crave perfection that we may not find.
Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.

You peasants and you hermits simple livers!
So picturesquely pure all unconcerned
While we give up our bodies to be burned,
And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.

We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
We make a gaudy havoc of our life
And live a thousand ages in an hour.

Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
And dream of harassed continents the while.

Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
Delirious verses tortured statues spasms of paint,
Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
Inverted religion and perverted passion.

But since we are children of this age,
In curious ways discovering salvation,
I will not quit my muddled generation,
But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.

Although I know that Nature’s bounty yields
Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
Will I give back my body to the fields.

^{translated by Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell}

The heavy clouds are broken and blowing,

And once more I can see the wide common stretching beyond the four sides of the city.

Open the door. Half of the moon-toad is already up,

The glimmer of it is like smooth hoar-frost spreading over ten thousand li.

The river is a flat, shining chain. 

The moon, rising, is a white eye to the hills;

After it has risen, it is the bright heart of the sea.

Because I love it—so—round as a fan,

I hum songs until the dawn.

^{for Terry Tempest Williams}

I didn’t love

That I had this

Tendency

Toward melody

Or the appetite for drama

Always obvious

In my thinking

& in everything

I did. I wasn’t TV

Though I watched myself

Sometimes passively

As though brained or

Bludgeoned out of the fullness

Of my own reality. I felt

I had to respect what seduced me

Even if stupidly—even when it made

Me stupid—or meant I was—

Making of my mind a begging bowl

Laying myself waste for the devil

Making an innocent victim of the child within

So ferociously did I fear

Something adult, like sovereignty

Survival was a big-

Box-store-bought

Blanket. Not wet

But scented

With the antiseptics

Of the factory

It would take days

To air out, get it to resemble

The picture of something homey

And grandmother-made

I know what it’s like to pay

Money for such.

The three-dimensional

Image of things. To find

Them feeling hollow and smelling

Wrong. I know what it’s like.

The imitation of life.

I almost know what it means.

I disciplined my own form and the thinking

Within me. That may not be a religion

But it is grim theology.

The more muscle I had the better

I felt I could contain and conduct

The sorrow within. The smoother

Ran my blood and lymph.

My body dismayed me and I hated,

Adored it. Recurrent dreams

Of defective dolls kept coming back

To warn me. You are not a thing.

You are not the object against which forces

Tilt that you cannot control.

You are the entire subject of the world.

Tears rolled down a cheek of stone

My friend Terry writes about water

And land, mother and brother

Like a singer. I once despaired

To her that the only endangered

Species I had managed to speak

On behalf of up to that moment

Was myself. This seemed squalid

And narrow to me. Terry said it was real

Territory. I blinked melancholy

Into the seething night

Like a spotted owl in the eye

Of a security camera

Black and white bird without

Offspring or prey. My body

Is filled with plastic

I left my mother to die

To write these lines

You will parry that such is a false

Economy. But so

Are all the other ones we live by

The poetry of earth is never dead:
  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
  In summer luxury,—he has never done
  With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
  On a lone winter evening, when the frost
    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
    The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
  But being too happy in thine happiness,—
    That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
          In some melodious plot
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
    Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
  Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
  Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
          And purple-stained mouth;
  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
    And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
          And leaden-eyed despairs,
  Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

4.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
    Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
          But here there is no light,
  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

5.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
          And mid-May’s eldest child,
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
  To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
          In such an ecstasy!
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
    To thy high requiem become a sod.

7.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
  No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
          The same that oft-times hath
  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
  As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
    Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
          In the next valley-glades:
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,

On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red

Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro. 
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me

That isn’t also true of many others. 
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,

Pinpricks that shine a white writing 
I can’t read. I don’t want to know 
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy 

For the smell of autumn. Before 
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea, 

To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future 
With those new names it will need.  

In the year of providence, in the year of vast greenery, in the rainy season, 
when the creeks tore through the mountainside and flooded the fields,  
when the rains cut great black gouges in the hill behind the church  
so the bones poked through where graves once were— 
In the chaotic days, in the days of mess and brilliance, in the scatter 
of bones, of coffin splinter and bits of cloth where we scavenged 
among the decayed in the afternoon mists—such treasures we  
discovered, coins with faces no one knew, a crucifix golden in the sun,  
a ring and a brooch. We were children and wild, enjoyed the muck and loam  
until the old priest waved his shotgun in the air and we scattered, laughing. 
And then such a silence while we hid among the roots and bones 
of the ancient dead. I have never been happier than that.  

+

I wrote those lines three years ago, imagining decay I’d never see, 
though perhaps you have lived something like it where you are, 
hundreds of years from now, when I have been forgotten. 
In that iteration, they are my own bones poking from the loam 
behind the wrecked churchyard of my imagination. And you, whom I’ll  
never know, pick happily through them for coins. I was thinking about this poem 
at the grocery store, by the refrigerated meats, I was thinking of my distant future, 
and you who live there, when an old man fell suddenly to the floor.   
He lay there beside a broken mayonnaise jar. When I knew he wasn’t hurt,  
I helped him to the bathroom, where I dabbed at his shirt  
with one of those brown paper towels that come on endless rolls.  
He was sweating. He smelled of wine. He offered me $5 for my trouble.  
I didn’t want his money, but I took it just to make him happy.

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Why paint night over nightless day?
Every religion has Love,
but Love has no religion.

Love is an ocean—
no borders no shores.

Drown there and you won’t lament it.
The drowned have no regrets.

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Come out, come close.
Why hide? Why deceive?

You are me and I am you.
Why get mired in me’s and you’s?

We are light upon light—
and the glass light passes through. 

Why muddy ourselves with a grudge?

Together, we are whole and complete.
Why see through eyes that split one in two?

Why do the rich look down on the poor?
Why does the right hand scorn the left?
Both are from one body.
Why call one vile and one blessed?

One essence, one intelligence 
thrust us into one curved cosmos.

Where the soul counts one,
the mind insists on two. 

Five senses, six directions—drop the lot. 
Leap forth. Let oneness 
draw you closer, and draw you in.  

There you are a gold mine,
not just a nugget of gold. 

There’s one spirit in countless bodies,
one oil in countless almonds,
one meaning in countless words 
uttered by countless tongues. 

Shatter the jugs. The water is one.

Steeped in union, the heart remembers 
a world beyond words.
Soul, send the news. 

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way
        to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Cien Sonetos de Amor: XVII (No te amo como si fueras rosa)

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
Te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.  

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,   
      This universal frame began:   
  When nature underneath a heap   
      Of jarring atoms lay,   
    And could not heave her head, 
The tuneful voice was heard from high,   
    ‘Arise, ye more than dead!’   
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,   
  In order to their stations leap,   
     And Music’s power obey. 
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,   
   This universal frame began:   
   From harmony to harmony   
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,   
The diapason closing full in Man. 
  
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?   
    When Jubal struck the chorded shell,   
  His listening brethren stood around,   
    And, wondering, on their faces fell   
  To worship that celestial sound: 
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell   
    Within the hollow of that shell,   
    That spoke so sweetly, and so well.   
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?   
  
    The trumpet’s loud clangour  
      Excites us to arms,   
    With shrill notes of anger,   
      And mortal alarms.   
  The double double double beat   
      Of the thundering drum 
      Cries Hark! the foes come;   
  Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat!   
  
    The soft complaining flute,   
    In dying notes, discovers   
    The woes of hopeless lovers, 
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.   
  
    Sharp violins proclaim   
  Their jealous pangs and desperation,   
  Fury, frantic indignation,   
  Depth of pains, and height of passion, 
    For the fair, disdainful dame.   
  
    But O, what art can teach,   
    What human voice can reach,   
      The sacred organ’s praise?   
    Notes inspiring holy love, 
  Notes that wing their heavenly ways   
    To mend the choirs above.   
  
  Orpheus could lead the savage race;   
  And trees unrooted left their place,   
    Sequacious of the lyre; 
But bright Cecilia rais’d the wonder higher:   
When to her organ vocal breath was given,   
  An angel heard, and straight appear’d   
    Mistaking Earth for Heaven.   
  
GRAND CHORUS.


As from the power of sacred lays 
  The spheres began to move,   
And sung the great Creator’s praise   
  To all the Blest above;   
So when the last and dreadful hour   
This crumbling pageant shall devour, 
The trumpet shall be heard on high,   
The dead shall live, the living die,   
And Music shall untune the sky!

I’m sorry I’m taking the car to the airport that is closer to,
rather than farther away from, the oncoming hurricane. 
In the parking garage of my love for you, I circle around
quietly, looking for a space to put the day’s best guesses, 
one not too far from the kiosk of you, standing mute and 
ready to hand me a small slip of paper that reads  I’m sorry
I can’t tell you what I want.  So we’re both mildly apologetic 
all the time, which is a small courtesy, two pulsars fanning
light at one another in bursts detectable years later. Why
won’t you take this bundle of daffodils. Why have the 
daffodils turned into dirty forks. I’m sorry about my socks.
See, there I go again. In the backyard, a vine from next
door has crawled up and over the fence and has flourished
there, a great nest of green six feet off the ground. I’d
trim it, but you’re holding the hedge clippers against your
hair. You’re saying that your hair is morning glories and 
you’d like to keep the morning glories if possible. I don’t 
even know what morning glories are exactly; my mother
is an excellent gardener but I have neither her memory for
color nor your cataloguing tendencies and it’s late in the day
and I’m sorry for that. It’s difficult to hold you in this
shaft of light when you keep taking three steps away and 
sitting down in the nearest chair, one hand on each knee
like a monument. It’s difficult to feel your body against
my side in sleep, the desires it holds distant and tired, 
like an animal that has walked too far in an inhospitable
climate. I am full of water but as thirst is a form of 
suffering, I would not wish it upon you. Instead, I will
work my way through your dreaming, which I know is of
endless snow fields. I will wait in this puddle of melt. 
Perhaps, one day, you will come to me with your skin 
near to brittle from the cold you love so much. Perhaps on 
that day we can begin to think together about the seasons, 
about how spring can also arrive in precision, if you let it.

I must have missed the last train out of this gray city.
I’m scrolling the radio through shhhhh. The streetlamps

fill with light, right on time, but no one is pouring it in.
Twentieth Century, you’re gone. You’re tucked into

a sleeping car, rolling to god-knows-where, and I’m
lonely for you. I know it’s naïve. But your horrors

were far away, and I thought I could stand them.
Twentieth Century, we had a good life more or less,

didn’t we? You made me. You wove the long braid
down my back. You kissed me in the snowy street

with everyone watching. You opened your mouth a little
and it scared me. Twentieth Century, it’s me, it’s me.

You said that to me once, as if I’d forgotten your face.
You strung me out until trees seemed to breathe,

expanding and contracting. You played “American Girl”
and turned it up loud. You said I was untouchable.

Do you remember the nights at Alum Creek, the lit
windows painting yellow Rothkos on the water?

Are they still there, or did you take them with you?
Say something. I’m here, waiting, scrolling the radio.

On every frequency, someone hushes me. Is it you?
Twentieth Century, are you there? I thought you were

a simpler time. I thought we’d live on a mountain
together, drinking melted snow, carving hawk totems

from downed pines. We’d never come back. Twentieth
Century, I was in so deep, I couldn’t see an end to you.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

^{i.m. Sam Fox, 1941–2020}

In a charmed summer garden
among the fruit trees where
we walked along the wall
we barely noticed it.

At one point when you leaned
against it, it gave way.
There was a sudden breeze.
You were no longer there.

Bird cries did not abate
and the stream went on flowing.
Small creatures scurried. How can
a man evaporate?

Time turns a corner and
the world is as it was
yesterday afternoon
but for that sleight-of-hand.

I’m wise and damaged now.
Give me some time to rest.
All the bright illusions
I loved are giving way.

^{A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
—BBC Nature News}

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                                        of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                                                        I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
                        one thing today and another tomorrow
        and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

                        I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
        between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                                                        I will speak
                        the impossible hope of the firefly.

                                                You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
        such wordless desire.

                                To say it is mindless is missing the point.