The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,
Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.
Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;
When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.
Month: August 2023
another humid day
sitting naked
the overhead fan
circulating the air
on this
another humid day
in Istanbul
I wonder
briefly
what life is like
5000 miles away
where I once belonged
in another life
on another planet
in a country
so unlike
the one that exists
today
where people
I know and love
wonder how
life once imagined
started slipping
away
Poem in reply to my brother’s poem of nostalgia for Mianchi by Su Dongpo (Su Tung-p’o)
Who can say how life should look?
We are like swans that walk on slushy snow,
leaving their muddy footprints,
and when they soar, go off in what direction?
The old monks died, the new pagoda’s built,
ruined walls and old inscriptions vanish.
But why do we still recall the tumult,
long roads, exhausted travelers, crippled braying donkeys?
translated by Jiann I. Lin & David Young
Stay Home by Wendell Berry
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man’s life
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
on memory
memory
that selective reshuffling
of facts
where the objective
become the subjective
and all the other
participants
become supporting players
on the stage
one creates
in one’s mind
song from The Ryojin Hisho
Lying here awake quietly at daybreak,
I can’t hold back my tears at various thoughts.
Having spent my life in vain,
when can I expect to reach the Pure Land?
translated by Hiroaki Sato
with a nod to Ono No Komachi: these dreams
like Phil & Don
your lips
breasts legs
all charms within
are mine only
in these dreams
that fuel my night
to leave me spent
come morning
tanka 3 by Ono No Komachi
Every time I dozed off
and met the one I long for,
I’ve begun to count on
these things called dreams.
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
tanka 2 by Ono No Komachi
What do you tell me now,
I who grow old
in this rain of tears?
Your words, like the leaves,
have changed their hue.
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
a tanka by Ono No Komachi
My thoughts of you are endless,
and now that night has come
I’ll visit you by dream paths—
they can’t blame me for that.
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
Leonard Durso 