I cross the river to pluck hibiscus,
In the orchid marsh, many scented plants.
I pluck, but whom should I give them to?
For my love resides in a distant land.
Turning my head, I look toward home,
Along that vast and endless road.
Our hearts are one, yet we dwell apart,
Worrying and grieving till we grow old.
poetry
tanka 2 by Ishikawa Takuboku
Everyone’s
heading in the same direction.
And me, watching from the side.
a three line tanka by Ishikawa Takuboku
Taking off my gloves, my hands stop–
what is it?
a memory flits through my mind
translated by Hiroaki Sato
a tanka by Ariwara No Narihara
In the end
that’s the road I’ll travel–
I’ve known it all along–
but I didn’t think I’d have to start
this very day
translated by Burton Watson
Willow by Li Shang-yin
Awakening spring: how many leaves!
Rustling dawn: how many branches!
Does she know the pangs of love?
Never a time she wouldn’t dance.
Pussy willows aflutter–hide white butterfly,
Tendrils hanging limp–bare yellow oriole.
All conquering beauty, perfect through and through:
Who would enjoy just the brows of her eyes?
translated by Eugene Eoyang & Irving Y.Lo
Heaven by Robert Creeley
If life were easy
and it all worked out,
what would this sadness
be about.
If it was happy
day after day,
what would happen
anyway.
After by Robert Creeley
I’ll not write again
things a young man
thinks, not the words
of that feeling.
There is no world
except felt, no
one there but
must be here also.
If that time was
echoing, a vindication
apparent, if flesh
and bone coincided–
let the body be.
See faces float
over the horizon let
the day end.
The Banner Bearer by William Carlos Williams
In the rain, the lonesome
dog idiosyn-
cratically, with each
quadribeat, throws
out the left fore-
foot beyond
the right intent, in
his stride,
on some obscure
insistence–from bridge-
ward going
into new territory.
poem by William Carlos Williams
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime by William Carlos Williams
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
Leonard Durso 