In spring,
You delicately waved your handkerchief.
Were you telling me to go far away?
Or to come back at once?

No, it doesn’t mean anything
And doesn’t amount to anything.
It’s like a flower fallen into the river,
Like a pearl of dew resting on the flower.

Only the shadows comprehend,
Only the wind perceives,
Only the richly colored butterfly startled by a sigh
Keeps flying back over the heart of the flower. . .

translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin

Why should I always be torn from the desire of my heart?
Yet you have sworn you would be my companion, always beside me;
That you swore by the stars, or by the light of your eyes.
Woman’s words are as light as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn,
Easily swept by the wind, easily drowned by the wave.
If there is still in your heart some feeling of faith toward a lost man,
Add to the promise you made something by way of a deed.
Soon as you can, shake the reins over the manes of your ponies,
Whirl the light car along, swiftly as ever you can,
And wherever she comes, O hills, sink low for her passing,
O be easy to ride, winding roads in the vales!

translated by Rolfe Humphries

The souls of all my dears have flown to the stars.
Thank God there’s no one left for me to lose–
so I am free to cry. This air is made
for the echoing of songs.

A silver willow by the shore
trails to the bright September waters.
My shadow, risen from the past,
glides silently towards me.

Though the branches here are hung with many lyres,
a place has been reserved for mine, it seems.
And now this shower, struck by sunlight,
brings me good news, my cup of consolation.

translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

We don’t know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you’re moody, I am your shadow.

Let’s step inside a church and watch
baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead.
Why are we different from the rest?
Outdoors again, each of us turns his head.

Or else let’s sit in the graveyard
on the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.

translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the…

These mountains emerald clouds at the far end of distance.
In tonight’s clarity, one sound: a whisper of white snow.

I’m sending thoughts of you a thousand miles of moonlight:
scraps of light along canyon streams, haze of steady rain.

translated by David Hinton

By heaven above
I want us together, heart and mind, my love,
want it destiny on and on, without breach or fail.

Not till mountains have no peaks
and rivers run dry,
not till thunder fills winter days
and summer rains turn to snow,
not till all heaven and earth blur
together, my love, will I part from you.

translated by David Hinton

Love is a universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens and nightmares–
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.

Take courage, lover!
Can you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?

If you saw
dog pass, in car–

looking out, possibly
indifferently, at you–

would you–could you–
shout, “Hey, Spot!

It’s me!” After all
these years,

no dog’s coming home
again. Its skin’s

moldered
through rain, dirt,

to dust, hair alone
survives, matted tangle.

Your own, changed,
your hair, greyed,

your voice not the one
used to call him home.

“Hey Spot!” The world’s
greatest dog’s got

lost in the world,
got lost long ago.

Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,

could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,

like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you—
that one, my son.