^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

The cry of the cicada

Gives us no sign

That presently it will die.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,—
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter’s frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o’er kings to rule;—
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Green spring grass on
                     the hills had cured
                              by June and by July

                                                                          gone wooly and
                                                                brown, it crackled
                                            underfoot, desiccated while

within the clamor of live
                    oaks, an infestation of
                                          tiny larvae clung

                                                                        to the underleaves,
                                                             feeding between
                                         veins. Their frass, that

fine dandruff of excrement
                    and boring dust, tinkled
                                       as it dropped onto dead leaves

                                                                    below the limbs. You
                                                          could hear it twenty
                                                  feet away, tinkling.

Across the valley, on
                     Sugarloaf Ridge, the full
                                       moon showed up

                                                           like a girl doing cartwheels.
                                                  No one goes on living
                                       the life that isn’t there.

Below a vast column of
                      smoke, heat, flame, and
                                  wind, I rose, swaying

                                                              and tottering on my
                                                    erratic vortex, extemporizing
                               my own extreme weather, sucking up

acres of scorched
           topsoil and spinning it
                                outward in a burning sleet

                                                                of filth and embers that
                                           catapulted me forward
                                 with my mouth open

in every direction at once. So
                     I came for you, churning, turning
                                         the present into purgatory

                                                                because I need to turn
                                           everything to tragedy before
                                I can see it, because

it must be
           leavened with remorse
                      for the feeling to rise.

Lark hit us in the face with his rising sound.

We were unstruck by wind before and raced

Train, and saw all signs with one eye only,

And were shelled against sky

And all that we went by.

Now lark said something in the field and we heard it,

And it mounted and rode upon our ears as we sped.

And we heard windshield rattle and canvas creak thereafter,

And pondered every line

Of hill and sign.

Earth put a roaring halt 
to our empty rabid existence 
ceasing marathon plastic productions 
disintegrating worldwide stock markets 
shuttering ubiquitous greed

Earth put a roaring halt 
to our multimillion-dollar-games 
sunk crude oil markets to asunder 
stopped our titillating trophy hunts 
our eating bloody meat in hoards 
our cruel trampling of the land 
put an end to our soiling of the skies 
our tarnishing the homes where water-beasts are born

In one thunderous clap the Planet hurled 
an instant standstill to our haywire 
to our decapitation of mountain tops 
our butchering of tree-communities 
to our murdering sprees of elephant 
and whale, tiger infants 
and elders, mothers and girls

Throughout passing days of sirens 
our existence is halted 
a new plague set into motion 
our mass die-off 
launched. 

It will be Summer eventually —
Ladies with parasols,
Sauntering gentlemen with canes,
And little girls with dolls

Will tint the pallid landscape
As’t were a bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in Parian
The village lies to-day.

The lilacs, bending many a year,
Will sway with purple load ;
The bees will not despise the tune
Their forefathers have hummed ;

The wild rose redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,

Till Summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
When Sacrament is done.

I’m sorry for the Dead to-day,
It’s such congenial times
Old neighbors have at fences
At time o’ year for hay —

When broad sun-burned acquaintances
Discourse between the toil
And laugh, a homely species,
That makes the meadows smile.

It seems so straight to lie away
From all the noise of fields,
The busy carts, the fragrant cocks,
The mower’s meter steals

A trouble, lest they’re homesick, —
Those farmers and their wives,
Set separate from the farming
And all the neighbors’ lives.

I wonder if the sepulchre
Is not a lonesome way,
When and boys, and larks and June
Go down the fields to hay !

To disappear enhances ;
The man who runs away
Is tinctured for an instant
With Immortality.

But yesterday a vagrant,
Today in memory lain
With superstitious merit
We tamper with again.

But never far as Honour
Removes the paltry One,
And impotent to cherish
We hasten to adorn.

Of Death the sharpest function,
That, just as a we discern,
The Excellence defies us ;
Securest gathered then

The fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight.

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest

I slept under     rhododendron
All night    blossoms fell
Shivering on	a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck   in my pack
Hands deep    in my pockets
Barely  able    to   sleep.
I remembered    when we were in school
Sleeping together   in a big warm bed
We were     the youngest lovers
When we broke up     we were still nineteen
Now our   friends are married
You teach  school back east
I don’t mind     living this way
Green hills   the long blue beach
But sometimes	  sleeping in the open
I think back    when I had you.

      A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.

    An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

           December at Yase

You said, that October, 
In the tall dry grass by the orchard 
When you chose to be free, 
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have 
Gone by: I’ve always known
         where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn’t.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had 
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my 
        karma demands.