pide and wine
a guitar a singer
dark eyes on my mind
there’ll be no sleep
this night
in kadiköy
memory
A remembrance is moving by Juan Ramon Jimenez
A remembrance is moving
down the long memory, disturbing
the dry leaves with its delicate feet.
—Behind, the house is empty.
On ahead, highways
going on to other places, solitary highways,
stretched out.
And the rain is like weeping eyes,
as if the eternal moment were going blind—.
Even though the house is quiet and shut,
even though I am not in it, I am in it.
And. . .good-bye, you who are walking
without turning your head!
translated by Robert Bly
The Third Day of the Third Month: To My Cousins and Thinking of Commissioner Ts’ui by Wei Ying-wu
The season seems to be ending early
this morning felt sadder still
the wind stirs a heartbreaking spring
and the pond chills a flowerless night
the longer I look at the wine
the clearer you become
who is that walking along the winding river
looking for my footprints and thinking of me
translated by Red Pine
untitled poem by Ryokan
All through the night
in my grass hut
burning brushwood,
how we talked on and on–
when will I forget it?
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
Long Winter Night by Ryokan
I remember when I was young
reading alone in an empty hall,
again and again refilling the lamp with oil,
never minding then how long the winter night was.
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
voices and vows
you said
what I took for a vow
it changed my direction
broken
years later
I still hear your voice
and wonder
to whom you tell
those words to
now
replay 2
there come those times
in the day at night
when you replay moments
adjust positions
fine-tune dialogue
edit in your favor
those words
you shouldn’t have said
and you think yes
this is the way
it should have might have
played
and a different life
than the one you’re living
causes that lump
that tear
there
anonymous tanka 8 from The Kokinshu
Orange blossoms that came
with the fifth month–
breathing their scent,
I catch the fragrance of the sleeve
of someone from long ago
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
A Night at a Tavern by Tu Mu
Solitary at a tavern,
I am shut in with loneliness and grief.
Under the cold lamp, I brood on the past;
I am kept awake by a lost wildgoose.
. . .Roused at dawn from a misty dream,
I read, a year later, news from home—
And I remember the moon like smoke on the river
And a fisher-boat moored there, under my door.
translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu
The Garden of the Golden Valley by Tu Mu
Stories of passions make sweet dust,
Calm water, grasses unconcerned.
At sunset, when birds cry in the wind,
Petals are falling like a girl’s robe long ago.
translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu
Leonard Durso 