Translated by Arthur Waley
All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept on hearing a voice calling:
Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “Yes.”
Any publishers interested in this anthology? Poetry selections from Bookgleaner@gmail.com - - Also: http://Outwardboundideas.blogspot.com - http://Onwardboundhumor.blogspot.com - http://Homewardboundphotos.blogspot.com - And http://davidthemaker.blogspot.com/
Translated by Arthur Waley
All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept on hearing a voice calling:
Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “Yes.”
For Ben
Their ordeal over, now the only trouble
was conveying somehow to a boy of three
that for a week or two he’d be seeing double.
Surely he wouldn’t recall the surgery
years later, but what about the psychic scars?
And so, when the patch come off, they bought the toy
he’d wanted most. He held it high “Two Cars!”
he cried; and drove himself from joy to joy.
Two baby sisters… One was enough of Clare,
but who could complain—conderring that another
woman had stepped forward to take care
of the girls, which left him all alone with Mother.
Victory! Even when he went to pee,
he was seconded in his virility.
"Wow! I asked the Gemini AI to write a poem about the fall of Icarus
and this is what I got. "
On fragile wings, ambition soared,
Icarus, by Daedalus adored.
Escaped they did, from island's plight,
With feathers stitched and sunlit flight.
The world unfurled, a boundless blue,
But warnings wise, fell from his view.
Intoxicated, by heights unknown,
He chased the sun, upon its throne.
Too close he danced, with fiery might,
The waxen bond, could not withstand the light.
A silent scream, a feathery rain,
Icarus fell, a sun-kissed stain.
The waves embraced, his tragic fate,
A fleeting dream, sealed by his haste.
A lesson writ, in sky and sea,
Of hubris tamed, and mortality.
Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata
Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Moutain,
Wearing a huge hat in the noonday sun?
How thin, how wretchedly, you have grown!
You must have been suffering from poetry again.
To John Brodie
Nightfall: the town’s chromatic nocturne wakes
dark brilliance on the river; colours drift
and tremble as enormous shadows lift
Orion to his place. The heart remakes
that peace torn in the blaze of day. Inside
your room are music, warmth and wine, the board
with chessmen set for play. The harpsichord
begins a fugue; delight is multiplied.
A game: the heart’s impossible ideal —
to choose among a host of paths, and know
that if the kingdom crumbles one can yield
and have the choice again. Abstract and real
joined in their trance of thought, the two players show
the calm of gods above a troubled field.
Translated by Arther Waley
Families when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked by whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he’ll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.
The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the present—
Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of
pressed tin,
this painting proposes.
Each carries the same water, it says.
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons
in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win
if you know how many you had
before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children
go to heaven — or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head
to your hand to your pencil to your paper
till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right
and everything is nice and you can look
out of the window and see the blue sky — or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over
and try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again
and then double it a few more times, the number
gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher
and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is
when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply —
and you carry the multiplication table in your head and
hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad,
and you eat one and a striped zebra
with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and
she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them,
who is better in arithmetic, you or your mother?
The song begins and the eyes are lifted
but the sickle points toward the ground,
its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,
while over the dark wood, rising or falling,
the sun lifts on cool air,
the small body of a singing lark.
The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens
and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.
Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,
will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened
by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field
branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.
What is called in her rises from the ground
and is found in her body,
what she is given is secret even from her.
This silence is the seed in her
of everything she is
and falling through her body
to the ground from which she comes,
it finds a hidden place to grow
and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,
where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.
Translated by Thomas Merton
Ch’ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
and knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
“For” and “against” are forgotten.
No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
What is the opposite of a Prince?
A frog must be the answer, since,
As all good fairy stories tell,
When some witch says a magic spell,
Causing the prince to be disguised
So that he won’t be recognized,
He always ends up green and sad
And sitting on a lily pad.