One rain, and all the flowers done!
Third watch, and all the music still.
Except what strikes my ear and stays my sleep:
From windy branches the last drop falls.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Rain Passes by Yüan Mei
Rain passes, washing the face of the mountain;
Clouds come, the mountain’s in a dream.
Clouds, rain, come and go as they please.
The green mountain, as always, is unmoved.
translated by J.P. Seaton
for the new year
Is My Soul Asleep? by Antonio Machado
Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that labor
at night stopped? And the water
wheel of thought,
is it dry, the cups empty,
wheeling, carrying only shadows?
No my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its clear eyes open,
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.
translated b y Robery Bly
Light Pole by Rolf Jacobsen
My street lamp is so glacially alone in the night.
The small paving stones lay their heads down all around
where it holds up its light umbrella over them
so that the wicked dark will not come near.
It says: We are all far from home.
There’s no hope anymore.
translated by Robert Bly
Guardian Angel by Rolf Jacobsen
I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,
and your closest friend, whom you can never know,
blossoms that light up for the blind.
I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,
and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.
The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day
and makes you feel so fantastically happy.
I am the one you have loved for many years.
I walk beside you all day and look intently at you
and put my mouth against your heart
though you’re not aware of it.
I am your third arm, and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you cannot accept,
and who can never forget you.
translated by Robert Bly
here on this planet
here
the night fades
into morning
wet with heaven’s tears
for there is much
to cry about
to cry for
here on this planet
we slowly strip
apart
Lighthouse Keeper by Harry Martinson
In the puffing gusty nights,
when the lighthouse sways under storm clouds,
and the sea with its burning eyes climbs on the rocks,
you sit silently, thinking—
about Liz—who betrayed you that time—
and the fated, howling longing that exiled you out here
in the storm-beaten Scilly Islands.
And you mumble something to yourself
during the long watches on stormy nights
while the beacon throws its light a hundred miles out in the storm.
translated by Robert Bly
Road’s End by Rolf Jacobsen
The roads have come to their end now,
they don’t go any farther, they turn here,
over on the earth there.
You can’t go any farther if you don’t want
to go to the moon or the planets. Stop now
in time, and turn a wasp’s nest or a cow track,
a volcano opening or a clatter of stones in the woods—
it’s all the same.
They won’t go any farther as I’ve said
without changing, the engine to horseshoes,
the gear shift to a fir branch
which you hold loose in your hand
—what the hell is this?
translated by Robery Bly
Old Age by Rolf Jacobsen
I put a lot of stock in the old.
They sit looking at us and don’t see us,
and have plenty with their own,
like fishermen along big rivers,
motionless as a stone
in the summer night.
I put a lot of stock in fishermen along rivers
and old people and those who appear after a long illness.
They have something in their eyes
that you don’t see much anymore
the old, like convalescents
whose feet are not very sturdy under them
and pale foreheads as if after a fever.
The old
who so gradually become themselves once more
and so gradually break up
like smoke, no one notices it, they are gone
into sleep
and light.
translated by Robert Bly
Leonard Durso 