Everywhere petals are flying
And Spring is fading. Ten thousand
Atoms of sorrow whirl away
In the wind. I will watch the last
Flowers as they fade, and ease
The pain in my heart with wine.
Two kingfishers mate and nest in
The ruined river pavilion.
Stone unicorns, male and female,
Guard the great tomb near the park.
After the laws of their being,
All creatures pursue happiness.
Why have I let an official
Career swerve me from my goals?
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Being Present for the Moment
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Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
An online activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, standing on the right side of the history - for free Palestine.
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Dennis Mantin is a Toronto-based writer, artist, and filmmaker.
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Off the wall, under the freeway, over the rainbow, nothin' but net.
Erm, what am I doing with my life?
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet by accident.
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L'essenziale è invisibile e agli occhi e al cuore. Beccarlo è pura questione di culo
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Leonard Durso 
I love this one. Have not seen it before in KR’s or other translation.
It’s from Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems From The Chinese, which I bought in 1967, along with One Hundred Poems From The Japanese in SBX (Student Book Exchange) in Bowling Green. The first 2 books that introduced me to Asian poetry. And they have been with me in every house/apartment/hovel I lived in every since.
don’t know when this was written, but it’s timeless. I see the careful punctuation in this, and wonder what your thoughts are about punctuation in poetry. I’ve been a bit inclined to ignore it, and I’m starting to think that’s not good?
This was written in the 8th Century. As for the use of punctuation, that’s really up to the individual writer and the individual poem. Sometimes I feel a need to insert it and other times, depending on line breaks, it isn’t necessary or can even get in the way. I think I usually try to follow the old axiom: content determines form. So if it is necessary for understanding the content of the piece, then I use it. But if not, then I don’t. And that seems to work for me.
Thank you for that good advice
You’re welcome. Hope it helps.
Why are there so few poems about work and how it changes/makes us? Thanks for posting this. Such a big theme.
A good question. I find work enters into my prose more often than the poetry. Maybe I need more space to deal with that topic. Poems are like bricks in a house whereas prose is the house. Maybe work, being such a large part of our lives, needs a room or two of its own in that house. And for some people, it is the whole house, or, at least, one of the houses we might have occupied for a while in our life.
Perhaps you are right. I find family life equally challenging for the reasons you suggest. Like a fish describing water.
I agree. Family dynamics are so complex that one need not look any further for material.
Actually I was reminded of the blogger John Dofflemeyer on drycrikjournal here on wordpress. He writes about work a lot. Do you know his blog?