from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
Separation
By W. S. Merwin
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W.S. Merwin, poet, 1927-2019
those eyes
it’s the eyes
that stay
with you
there in the night
no matter how long
ago how far
away
those eyes
of all those lost
to the years
stay with you
there
in the night
The Call of the Cuckoo by Wei Ying-wu
Dew drips from tall trees on a clear summer night
in the hills to the south a cuckoo calls
the widow next door comforts her child
I turn in bed and wait for first light
translated by Red Pine
from Spring Scene by Tu Fu
a letter from home
is worth a fortune
translated by David Young
Fragment by Bian Zhilin
You are standing on a bridge enjoying the view;
Someone’s watching you from a balcony.
The moon adorns your window;
You adorn someone else’s dream.
translated by Michelle Yeh
open book
she was
an open book
just not the book
I was reading
poem XX by Paul Eluard
Dawn I love you I have the whole night in my veins
all night I watched you
I have everything to divine
I am sure of the darkness
giving me the power
to envelop you
to excite your desire for life
in the heart of my immobility
the power to reveal you
to liberate you to lose you
flame invisible by day.
If you go the door opens on the day
If you go the door opens on me.
translated by Stuart Kendall
