One night a woman's breast came to a man's room and began to talk about her twin sister. Her twin sister this and her twin sister that. Finally the man said, but what about you, dear breast? And so the breast spent the rest of the night talking about herself. It was the same as…
This is the Eastern shore. Light flatters the land. Nature is docile here. It is the time of year after the corn harvest and before the geese. It is my annual return. I live in Europe but my mother insists I come back each fall because each fall may be my father's last. The car…
I have a photograph of my father wearing a black tuxedo and holding a suckling pig under his arm. He's on stage. Two dark-eyed beauties in low-cut party dresses are standing next to him and giggling. He's laughing too. The pig has its mouth open, but it doesn't look like it's laughing. It's New Year's…
1. Spring, and so they danced mid-air. He circled and repeated until she paused to a second's locking. Gazing by the window, dishtowel in hand, I almost missed it: red and gold, two velvets shivering, then she was away. He perched on the nearest branch; dead-still, head cocked, as if to save the event, as…
20/The Moon, the Whole Moon, and Nothing But the Moon Glorious, nourishing, flourishing moon, swollen with all the raw energy of time and what it does as light, I take off my hat, my coat, my tie, my shoes and socks to you. Breathing you in like an oceanic breeze, how can I expect to…
My white hairs are terribly unfeeling: Day after day I pluck them, but they grow again. They started as a single strand of silk, Then gradually became a thousand stalks of snow. I don't avoid the sniggers of beautiful women, I'm only ashamed of the children's fright. At New Year's, I passed the half-hundred mark…
Put a blade of grass between your lips! It too is the Son of God, it too is crucified by Spring, and rises again in winter's fury: how fiery just one breath is! I was happy here, you know. We walked all one summer in the hidden paths of elder and wild strawberries; love cooled…
trans. Finnish Jascha Kessler and the author To the evening that speaks in two thousand tongues and knows not the meaning of war, I give myself. To the nighthawk's, the nightingale's tongues, the presence unseen of all that is, whose dreams make me loved. Their speech never leaves the lips, never stales the wine, but…
The moon shines down over the public ferry, Alone, I'm overwhelmed by thoughts of home. Birds roost in the trees round Lake P'eng-li, The moon mounts high up above the boat on the Chien-ch'ang. Dead drunk, old fishermen disperse from the market, In secluded buildings travelling merchants sleep. Where is that flute playing across the…
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