Poetry

  • Tune: Raise The Cup. No. 1

         Fragrant grass on the spring bank in Pa-ling,                  mist thick in the willows,            music fills the towers. The tune of a parting song: my heart is shattered to pieces.      Today I bid you farewell a myriad times.      Red flecked jade plates, gold flecked cups.                        I must urge you,      …

  • The Forgotten Commander

    trans. Swedish Robert Bly We have many shadows. I was walking home one September night when Y. rose from his grave after forty years and joined me on my walk. He seemed blown clean at first except for his name, but his thoughts swam faster than time could run, and they caught up. I fitted…

  • Tune: Raise The Cup. No. 2

         A white horse, a jade crop, and gilded reins:                  so easy for a young man            to say farewell. The road into the distance is a million miles long.      If you're saddened by clouds and water in a strange land, fill your cup with wine, I beg you with tears.                  …

  • Ode to an Old Wine

    trans. Danish Alexander Taylor and the author The wine that ripened up along the mountain slopes late that summer we met each other is already golden and full of the aftertaste of an abundance, evaporated like years in the sun and the night breeze looks into me with its poplar leaves:            I am tired…

  • Tune: Song Of An Immortal. No. 2

    Return deep in the night, drunk out of my mind, I'm helped stagger through the tasselled door-way, still      unsobered; pass out cold: wine stench blends with the scent of musk      and orchid.                  I wake up with a start:                  HA! HA! HA! I've always said,            ”How long can a man live?”

  • The Post Office

    How beautiful the letters are      we never get mailed compared to the letters we send and how astonishing the answers: The unexpected words that fall together      all by themselves forming perfect solutions to problems      we only then discover. For instance, I knew nothing about Venezuela before I began writing these lines and now I've already…

  • Tune: Song Of Waterclock At Night

               Bell and drum cold,            pavilion tower dark, moon shines on the golden well by the ancient pawlonias,            deep compound locked,            small courtyard empty,      fallen flowers pink in the fragrant dew.            Misty willows sombre,            spring haze light, lamp behind the crystal window in the tall pavilion;            quietly rests against…

  • The Cry

    trans. Norwegian Nadia Christensen The railway station has laid its ears to the tracks Every window is open this summer night. The sky And the train. Like a far-away cry . . . Come Crossings. Stratospheric bells. Signal lights coupled to the sunrise. An undertow of rumbling trains cutting gaps in valleys and time ….

  • Once More

    trans. Hungarian Jascha Kessler and Maria Körösy You're so brave, you camp-followers of Cain — after Baudelaire, yet! Shit-shoveling first father, your visa was validated when that cretinous cudgel whammed the wandering flock's shepherd, that day-dreaming pastor, the smoke of whose sacrifice could rise up, while yours charred on the ground. Murder — sanctified as…