WHAT was the use of not leaving it there where it would hang what was the use if there was no chance of ever seeing it come there and show that it was handsome and right in the way it showed it. The lesson is to learn that it does show it, that it shows it and that nothing, that there is nothing, that there is no more to do about it and just so much more is there plenty of reason for making an exchange.

When I did name her little lost one, she
Brushed from her eyes the precious drops of love,
As if her memory with his sweet name shaken
Trembled, and shed its dew.

Mist veils the cold stream, and moonlight the sand,
As I moor in the shadow of a river-tavern,
Where girls, with no thought of a perished kingdom,
Gaily echo A Song of Courtyard Flowers.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;
A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone exsistence;
A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken--
Such hurt perchance as Nature feels wen a blossomed bough is broken.

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight;
My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine;
My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light
Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine.

A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.


Translated by Robert Hass

Old Santa Claus is up-to-date,
And hereafter, rumors say,
He'll come with his pack of glittering toys,
And visit the homes of girls and boys,
In a new reindeerless sleigh.

A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.

I am far from the clouds of Sung Mountain, a long way from trees in Qin;
And I send to you a message carried by two carp:
- Absent this autumn from the Prince's garden,
There's a poet at Maoling sick in the rain.

There are faint green mountains and far green waters,
And grasses in this river region not yet faded by autumn;
And clear in the moon on the Twenty-Four Bridges,
Girls white as jade are teaching flute-music.