I Hear You Call, Pine Tree

1875 –

1947

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?

This poem is in the public domain.

Yone Noguchi, the first Japanese-born writer to publish poetry in English, was born in 1875 in Tsushima. He lived and worked in San Francisco, and was the author of numerous books of poetry and prose. He died Toyooka-mura on July 13, 1947.

About Yone Noguchi

Occasion

Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

Themes

Nature

About this Poem

“I Hear You Call, Pine Tree” was published in Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi (Four Seas, 1921).

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How Near to Fairyland

The spring warmth steals into me, drying up all the tears of my soul,
And gives me a flight into the vastness,—into a floorless, unroofed reverie-hall.

Lo, such greenness, such velvety greenness, such a heaven without heaven above!
Lo, again, such grayness, such velvety grayness, such an earth without earth below!
My soul sails through the waveless mirror-seas.

Yone Noguchi

1921

I Am Like a Leaf

The silence is broken: into the nature
My soul sails out,
Carrying the song of life on his brow,
To meet the flowers and birds.

When my heart returns in the solitude,
She is very sad,
Looking back on the dead passions
Lying on Love’s ruin.

Yone Noguchi

1921

Poems

I Hear You Call, Pine Tree

More by this poet

[The faint shadow of the morning moon?]

How Near to Fairyland

I Am Like a Leaf

Poems

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I Hear You Call, Pine Tree

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