I chose the place where I would rest
When death should come to claim me,
With the red-rose roots to wrap my breast
And a quiet stone to name me.

But I am laid on a northern steep
With the roaring tides below me,
And only the frosts to bind my sleep,
And only the winds to know me.

I don't dare speak too loudly,
some timbres could be fatal--

that string is not too strong
I think: and at times I have

to breathe. Or maybe I fear
my paraphrastic exhalations

will spoil the oiled perfection
of its sleekness, will mist

over that brightness whose
needle sharp point compasses

my every stray. I am as
edgy in my way as it--

as little-rippled, as subtle.

Prey to vapors, to sudden
icecap thaws, seismic

dicethrows, the world wires me,
I hex myself up to a pitch

154

Except to Heaven, she is nought.
Except for Angels—lone.
Except to some wide-wandering Bee
A flower superfluous blown.

Except for winds—provincial.
Except by Butterflies
Unnoticed as a single dew
That on the Acre lies.

The smallest Housewife in the grass,
Yet take her from the Lawn
And somebody has lost the face
That made Existence—Home!

NOT Beelzebub, but white archangel, I
Turn the dim glass and shift the sands again,
And touch the eyelids of the sons of men
Lest they forget—forget and drowsy lie
In Fate’s unfurrowed fallow till they die—
As seed that quickens not for dawns that leap
From out the dark of immemorial years,
With kiss of wind and sun and wizard tears
Of fugitive clouds to wake them from their sleep.
With milestones I have set the crumbling sod
Of human judgement that they stray not wide,

Lately the wind burns
the last leaves and evening
comes too late to be
of use, lately I learned
that the year has turned
its face to winter
and nothing I say or do
can change anything.
So I sleep late and waken
long after the sun has risen
in an empty house and walk
the dusty halls or sit
and listen to the wind
creak in the eaves and struts
of this old house. I say
tomorrow will be different
but I know it won't.
I know the days are shortening
and when the sun pools
at my feet I can reach

Every tree is an ancestor tree,
not just grandfather redwoods.
Every sapling, every sprout,
carries that majesty,
the dissolution of stone and bone,
of mold and leaf and tongue,
flowing as freely as blood
in earth's leisurely body,
the oldest and slowest rhythms
crooning in its ways.

But who can sing with maple and beech
in the cold wind's demanding meters?
The crimson and gold of their dying fall
choke the singing of our blood.
We cling to the tree of our moment,
weep for its unleaving; our mothers

Blest be the God of love,
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day,
Both to be busy, and to play.
But much more blest be God above,
Who gave me sight alone,
Which to himself he did deny:
For when he sees my ways, I die:
But I have got his son, and he hath none.

What have I brought thee home
For this thy love? have I discharg'd the debt,
Which this day's favour did beget?
I ran; but all I brought, was foam.
Thy diet, care and cost
Do end in bubbles, balls of wind;
Of wind to thee whom I have crost,

Evening wind:
water laps
the heron's legs.


Translated by Robert Hass

What is the name you called me?--
And why did you go so soon?

The crows lift their caws on the wind,
And the wind changed and was lonely.

The warblers cry thier sleepy-songs
Across the valley gloaming,
Across the cattle-horns of early stars.

Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.

What is the name you called me?--
And why did you go so soon?

from Senlin: A Biography


It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtain for me . . .
I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space: