Classic Poem

It's eleven o'clock this Friday night —
thank God! the good deliverance,
this my little Nirvana,
companion for an hour,
everybody sleeping:
this is my good day.

Heart reaches the other world,
eternal, joyful.
Let me open the window:
private realm of Nature the queen.
The breeze, ambrosial sigh,
restores the earth to life;
a breath of wetness
from the leaves of drenched forests faraway:
the shaper of the moving clouds,
free guest and fair, a sinewy wanderer,
flies up as before,
stirring the inmost soul,
most light and graceful gandharva.
Come honored guest invisible,
recount the moon's romance,
how the lover was entangled
in the net of the monsoon —
come wind, tell the story,
tender, tender and good.

Misty the East, misty, blue twilit fog,
the South a white, white cave,
the West deep blue.
You called to Nature,
summoned her all day long.
Now nothing can be seen,
nothing can be heard until
breaking the blind circle
I hear just barely, just barely see,
the heart full of silent speech;
in this good moment I hear
a thousand nights.

I remember, twice we poured the water jug.
Toward evening the smiling lightning
burst and tore the veil,
and was afflicted, seeing the poet
dead, victim of fierce fever —
was it fear or wearing away?
I found just barely, just barely came:
come, give your vision.
Of many kinds are your
dances of desire
worthy of worship.

Mist over the fields far to the southeast,
as though the earth spirit had breathed
on the mirror of the moon,
tossing the yellow tufts of wheat,
thirsting for the green, as though to say
Let me adorn myself;
lazy the wave of its own conceiving,
lo, earth spirit sniffs the scent of jasmine,
and all the heaven spirits settle
spinning and spinning cotton.

I say thanks, thanks to the one
who keeps me in a house like this.
All bad luck dies today: I drink
nectar and I weep;
the fever of the whole week
disappears, well-being has no limit.
In this vastness someone laughs
and gathers foam flowers
far on the other side.
See, in my mind —
pliant vine of flickering dreams —
the lamp of highest bliss
blazes in the snow.

So many brightly colored pictures
alive on the cloudy red-silk-cotton tree!
Let them wither and fade.
Language dwells in water,
every moment change
and movement and growth.
Shall I not remember? The poet's heart
surely performs its labor
in its own privacy.

For one hour I talked
silently
in some communion.
I opened the window of an enormous house
inside the heart.
I moved with spread wings
over waves of nectar,
found freedom in flight, swung in moondust.
So rich am I, Mother! On earth I find heaven,
my forty-seven poor years
jewels today.
" Praise, " says Nature the queen,
" praise be to you! "
Better to live a few full moments
than a long life unfulfilled.