Bush warbler:
shits on the rice cakes
on the porch rail.


Translated by Robert Hass

Burnside, Burnside, whither doth thou wander?
Up stream, down stream, like a crazy gander?

Of the modern versifications of
ancient legendary tales. - An impromptu.

The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone:
The nurse took p the squealing child,
But still the child squeal'd on.

Things that go 'bump' in the night
Should not really give one a fright.
It's the hole in each ear
That lets in the fear,
That, and the absence of light!

Bryd ud, min Sjæl, med Tak, og siig:
O hvor er nu jeg blevet riig!
Min Jesus i mit Hjerte boer!
Et Himmerig det er paa Jord!

Some in front rank will defiant
Boldly place the Poet Bryant.

Brownie, Brownie, let down your milk
White as swansdown and smooth as silk,
Fresh as dew and pure as snow:
For I know where the cowslips blow,
And you shall have a cowslip wreath
No sweeter scented than your breath.

Home alone, late at night, doing what I always do. I’m rowing. Sitting on my kitchen chair, chained to an oar, I’m one of a hundred slaves making sure that the galley keeps moving forward through a sea that is sometimes calm, sometimes raging. Forward, to that distant port where, so rumour has it, we’ll be set free, at long last, after all these years. The others, my brothers in chains, sitting in chairs in their own kitchens in this huge sprawl of public housing, rowing ceaselessly, with a strength they didn’t know they possessed.

God, what a world, if men in street and mart,
Felt that same kinship of the human heart,
Which makes them, in the face of fire and flood,
Rise to the meaning of True Brotherhood.

Sunrise on the bridge
light splashing through the arches
joggers chasing dreams


(Previously published in Poems Md, Apr 2008)