Man’s life is like morning dew,
a flame eating up the oil night by night.
Why should I strain my ears
listening to the squeaks of this autumn insect?
Better lay aside the book
and drink my cup of jade-white wine.

translated by Burton Watson

children play outside
women laugh at table
a father pushes a swing
sprinklers water lawns
wind rustles curtains
a feral cat cries for food
the sun rises
and sets
this is a day
like any other
and yet words
were exchanged
promises made
a future unravels
where once
only a past existed
and those lyrics
to Rodgers and Hart
take on a new significance
once again

Where a poem belongs is here, in the warmth of the chest;
Out in the world it dies of cold.

translated by Robert Bly

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Winebringer, more wine! Bring me some of that strong wine that no one else
Can drink. I want to become unconscious and free of this world for a while.

I know that there’s no safety from the perils of the sky,
With the siren harp of Venus and the bloody sword of Mars.

In this age of meanness and deceit, at the world’s table,
There is no place for joy. And the food is prepared with too much salt.

So drink wine and wash your palate, so your greedy thirst will go away.

translated  by Thomas Rain Crowe

there are pictures
in drawers
one does not open
some memories
are best left buried
under old receipts
expired warranties
business cards
of places
one doesn’t go to
anymore

as I post pictures in albums
of trips I’ve taken
this past year
I find they are devoid
of people
or at least a person
who I would imagine
standing there
filling the frame
with her presence
and though there is no name
nor face
to that presence
I miss her
just the same

 Olvido These evenings are always vulgar. Once the day is gone with its splendor Filling up everywhere with our loneliness In a scream of colours from our garden, A hand starts to take out from our pack The sorrows smelling of lavender; These evenings are always vulgar. Regrets, attacking in waves, Pushes that bronze door of oblivion And the soul, full of holes with the arrows shot; Here, all of a sudden, you are in the old house where you were born The lamp and the stairs are watching your way, The cradle is creaking with silenced lullabies And all the lost, defeated, crestfallen... It is with the beauty of unspoken love The poems left incomplete on papers; One, towards a morning smelling of rain remembers one day that he opened a door, A cloud holding still, a bird flying, A stone that he knelt down and ate cheese and…

When rain like metal tips bounces off the sodden pastures, an amphibious dwarf, an Ophelia with empty sleeves, barely as large as a fist, rises at times from around the poet’s feet, and then hurtles herself into the nearest pool.
Let this nervous one flee. How beautiful her legs are. A glove impermeable to water envelops her body. Barely flesh at all, her long muscles in their elegance are neither animal nor fish. In order to escape from my fingers, the virtue of fluid allies in her with the battle of the life force. She puffs, widely goitered. . .And this heart that beats so strongly, the wrinkly eyelids, the old woman’s mouth, move me to set her free.

translated by Robert Bly