You arrived, a traveler from Ch’ang-an,
and now, returning there, you leave.
Headlong wind carries my thoughts away,
filling trees there in the western capital,
uneasy. There’s no saying how this feels,
or if we’ll ever meet again. I look far
without seeing you—look, and it’s all
mist-gathered mountains opening away.
translated by David Hinton
Month: October 2023
Spring Fades by Li Ch’ing-chao
Spring fades. Why should I suffer so much from homesickness?
I am ill. Combing my long hair exasperates me.
Under the roof beams the swallows chatter too much all day long.
A soft breeze fills the curtains with the perfume of roses.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung
5:30 am, Moda: a girl sobs
a girl sobs
quietly
as if not to disturb
the feral cats
watching from windows
the dogs sleeping
in doorways
the lone woman
wheeling her suitcase
down the hill
to a waiting cab
the lone old man
trudging by
who stops to ask
are you all right
she nods
thank you, yes
dabs tissue to eyes
and turns away
as she walks slowly
down a lonely street
lost to all
but her grief
Snowfall by Mark Strand
Watching snow cover the ground, cover itself,
cover everything that is not you, you see
it is the downward drift of light
upon the sound of air sweeping away the air,
it is the fall of moments into moments, the burial
of sleep, the down of winter, the negative of night.
Fernando Pessoa writing as Alexander Search: Epigram
“I love my dreams,” I said, a winter morn,
To the practical man, and he, in scorn,
Replied: “I am no slave of the Ideal,
But, as all men of sense, I love the Real.”
Poor fool, mistaking all that is and seems!
I love the Real when I love my dreams.
translated by Richard Zenith
An Old Man Awake in His Own Death by Mark Strand
This is the place that was promised
when I went to sleep
taken from me when I woke.
This is the place unknown to anyone,
where names of ships and stars
drift out of reach.
The mountains are not mountains anymore;
the sun is not the sun.
One tends to forget how it was;
I see myself, I see
the shine of darkness on my brow.
Once I was whole, once I was young . . .
As if it mattered now
and you could hear me
and the weather of this place would ever cease.
on cheerleaders and ice cream
there was the ice-cream parlour
on the corner
of Sunrise Highway
and Atlantic Avenue
that you never frequented
but she sat there
on a stool
among the many high school jocks
who admired her long legs
and slender ankles
that bright cheerleader smile
the girl you pined for
but hope faded
when she called you
dear friend
and patted your hand
like a pet dog
while she glided down rows
of desks
toward the front
leaving you in the back
next to the window
gazing out
hoping to see
the future
you belonged in
but which clearly
did not hold
ice-cream parlours
and cheerleader smiles
The Story by Mark Strand
It is the old story: complaints about the moon
sinking into the sea, about stars in the first light fading,
about the lawn wet with dew, the lawn silver, the lawn cold.
It goes on and on: a man stares at his shadow
and says it’s the ash of himself falling away, says his days
are the real black holes in space. But none of it’s true.
You know the one I mean: it’s the one about the minutes dying,
and the hours, and the years; it’s the story I tell
about myself, about you, about everyone.
So You Say by Mark Strand
It is all in the mind, you say, and has
nothing to do with happiness. The coming of cold,
the coming of heat, the mind has all the time in the world.
I wish the bottom of things were not so far away.
You take my arm and say something will happen,
something unusual for which we were always prepared,
like the sun arriving after a day in Asia,
like the moon departing after a night with us.
For Her by Mark Strand
Let it be anywhere
on any night you wish,
in your room that is empty and dark
or down the street
or at those dim frontiers
you barely see, barely dream of.
You will not feel desire,
nothing will warn you,
no sudden wind, no stillness of air.
She will appear,
looking like someone you knew:
the friend who wasted her life,
the girl who sat under the palm tree.
Her bracelets will glitter,
becoming the lights
of a village you turned from years ago.
Leonard Durso 