Perhaps the street I’ve gone into and come out of
for so many years will no longer look at my face
nor even remember my name. . .
the sky I carry over my head,
the table at which I have my meals, the bed that gives me haven,
the worries I can’t do away with
to all of them I should bid farewell
say good-bye to all of them at the dawn of this day.

And I should bid welcome my darling
with your face, hands, and voice
to all things that sparkle in my blood.

translated by Talat S. Halman

Fog moistens both wings
But the wind allows no dallying
O shore, beloved shore
We parted just yesterday
And you are here again today
Tomorrow at a different latitude
We shall meet along my course

Remember the storm, the lighthouse
That brought us together
Another storm, a different light
Drove us asunder again
Even though morning or evening
Sky and ocean stand between us
You are always on my voyage
I am always in your sight

translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin

adrift on foreign waters
looking for the harbor
to drop anchor
in

The cold hue newly clears, a belt of haze;
The mysterious sound gurgles afar, the ten-stringed lute.
Endlessly to my pillow they come, to draw thoughts of love,
Not letting this pensive soul half the night to sleep.

translated by Eric W. Johnson

The mind is an ocean. . .and so many worlds
Are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!
And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating
On the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink. . .
Not even one bubble will show where it went down.

The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!
But reach for it. . .Don’t be a jar
Full of water, whose rim is always dry.
Don’t be the rider who gallops all night
And never sees the horse that is beneath him.

translated by Robert Bly

For those who truly love God and His ways
All the people of the world are brothers and sisters.

translated by Talat S. Halman

I just finished watching Opening Night on DVD again after having not seen it since it opened in LA sometime around Christmas in 1977.

1977.  LA.  Another lifetime ago.

That would be the first Christmas season at Intellectuals & Liars with Jimmy, Gordon, & Joel, before Randy joined us, or Bill.  What did we sell then: the literature, the poetry: the small press editions like Black Sparrow copies of Charles Bukowski or Mulch Press books of Paul Blackburn, novels by Joan Didion, Thomas Hardy, Hemingway, E.M. Forster, Tom McGuane, Don DeLillo, Robert Coover, Gary Snyder, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara.  Barely 1000 feet of selling space divided into 2 rooms, those reminder tables in the back with hardcover copies of Scandinavian plays for $1.98 and the hardcover copy I kept of Sunflower Splendor, 3000 years of Chinese poetry, which I have here in Istanbul and periodically still lose myself…

Each day the gold sun comes over the hill.
The woods are beautiful, also the dark animals,
Also man; hunter or farmer.

The fish rises with a red body in the green pond.
Under the arch of heaven
The fisherman travels smoothly in his blue skiff.

The grain, the cluster of grapes, ripen slowly.
When the still day comes to an end,
Both evil and good have been prepared.

When the night has come,
Easily the pilgrim lifts his heavy eyelids;
The sun breaks from gloomy ravines.

translated by Robert Bly