Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
...
The Moon will shine,
Without your smile,
But no longer shall it be,
A Moon that shines for me,
...
The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.
...
I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.
I raise my cup to entice the moon.
...
translated by Will Kirkland
The moon came into the forge
in her bustle of flowering nard.
...
Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,
I pour alone lacking companionship.
So raising the cup I invite the Moon,
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.
...
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
...
As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
...
Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
...
From where I lingered in a lull in March
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
...
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit
Dumb
...
'I thought you loved me.' 'No, it was only fun.'
'When we stood there, closer than all?' 'Well, the harvest moon
Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head.'
'That made you?' 'Yes.' 'Just the moon and the light it made
...
Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
...
Seeing we never found gay fairyland
(Though still we crouched by bluebells moon by moon)
And missed the tide of Lethe; yet are soon
For that new bridge that leaves old Styx half-spanned;
...
So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.
...
At the twilight, a moon appeared in the sky;
Then it landed on earth to look at me.
...
whatever slid into my mother's room that
late june night, tapping her great belly,
summoned me out roundheaded and unsmiling.
is this the moon, my father used to grin.
...
What have you got in your knapsack fair,
White moon, bright moon, pearling the air,
Spinning your bobbins and fabrics free,
Fleet moon, sweet moon, in to the sea?
...
When the moon was full they came to the water.
some with pitchforks, some with rakes,
some with sieves and ladles,
and one with a silver cup.
...
When you, my Dear, are away, away,
How wearily goes the creeping day.
A year drags after morning, and night
Starts another year of candle light.
...
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
...
The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.
...
Have you seen the Full Moon tonight
When the sky was more than generous
It had started distributing goodies gratis
In the evening when the moon was rising
...
THE brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
...
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
...
It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
...
'Oh, dear, this utterly sweltering season of the highly rampant sun is drawing nigh, and it will always be good enough to go on taking daytime baths, as the lakes and rivers will still be with plenteous waters, and at the end of the day, nightfall will be pleasant with fascinating moon, and in such nights Love-god can somehow be almost mollified...[who tortured us in the previous vernal season... but now without His sweltering us, we can happily enjoy the nights devouring cool soft drinks and dancing and merrymaking in outfields...]
...
The moon drops one or two feathers into the fiels.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
...
A lonely star in the sky,
Is looking for a friend,
It wants to die,
Cause no one intend.
...
The moon comes forth, bright in the sky;
A lovelier sight to draw my eye
Is she, that lady fair.
...
Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.
...
Shadows creep stealthily across the lawn,
Whilst night, unruffled, defies the dawn,
And the moon released from day's embrace,
Smiling, wakes up and shows his face
...
Moon in satin while veil
sees reflection in groom’s eye-
blushes like morn’s sun
...
The child's wonder
At the old moon
Comes back nightly.
She points her finger
...
Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.
...
THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
...
a cuckoo cries
and through a thicket of bamboo
the late moon shines
...
Loneliness like a good, old friend
visits my house to pour wine in the evening.
And we sit together, waiting for the moon,
and for your face to sparkle in every shadow.
...
Ever, ever
Stir and shiver
The reeds and rushes
By the river:
...
When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep
Under the heaped-up light,
...
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
...
STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
...
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
...
I.
In the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine aethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
...
I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a
temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.
For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the
...
The image of the moon at night
All trembling in the ocean lies,
But she, with calm and steadfast light,
Moves proudly through the radiant skies,
...
Night is stygian sans of stars
Dark mood shares kinship
With black sky of new moon
Moon's jubilant child I am shedding
...
there it was..the moon
lying in the shallow rain water
a shaky moon..never
very sure of itself
...
Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
...
LOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple;
...
The moon stared hiding itself,
The night was sitting
Nude in the balcony
...
Lord, what a Beloved is mine! I have a sweet quarry; I possess
in my breast a hundred meadows from his reed.
When in anger the messenger comes and repairs towards me,
he says, “Whither are you fleeing? I have business with you.”
...
With a jar of wine I sit by the flowering trees.
I drink alone, and where are my friends?
Ah, the moon above looks down on me;
I call and lift my cup to his brightness.
...
THE apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
...
Thief of the moon, thou robber of old delight,
Thy charms have stolen the star-gold, quenched the moon-
Cold, cold are the birds that, bubbling out of night,
Cried once to my ears their unremembered tune-
...
Moses, from whose loins I sprung,
Lit by a lamp in his blood
Ten immutable rules, a moon
For mutable lampless men.
...
Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
...
The Moon's the North Wind's cooky.
He bites it, day by day,
Until there's but a rim of scraps
That crumble all away.
...
I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
...
THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,
...
1
Many animals that our fathers killed in America
Had quick eyes.
...
WHEN have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
...
CRAZED through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky;
Moon-struck by the despairing
Glances of her wandering eye
...
'The great ambition of women is to inspire love'
- Moliere
....................................
...
I only said, "When in the evening the round full moon gets
entangled among the beaches of that Dadam tree, couldn't somebody
catch it?"
But dada laughed at me and said, "Baby, you are the silliest
...
When I was a boy I called the moon a
white plate of jade, sometimes it looked
like a great mirror hanging in the sky,
first came the two legs of the fairy
...
Where has this moon gone?
the moon that used to brighten up
the night sky,
And the moon that used to shine
...
On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
...
Face of the spring moon--
about twelve years old,
I'd say.
...
Spanish
La luna es pálida y triste, la luna es exangüe y yerta.
La media luna figúraseme un suave perfil de muerta…
...
Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.
...
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
...
moon shadow
the little gray mouse
edges toward the cheese
...
The moon renounced to dawn and vanish its waning shine.
She conceded one fray to lose, to win another gasp of time.
Reflection seen on the streams of swirling pools,
...
Your eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
...
You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea:
The tide of hope swells high within my breast,
And hides the rough dark rocks of life’s unrest
When your fond eyes smile near in perigee.
...
the sun and moon
the wind and rain
all this come to me
for a gain..and
...
The bright moon bows down
To the wildness of the sea
Stars quit from shining.
...
Staying at an inn
where prostitutes are also sleeping--
bush clover and the moon.
...
What is behind the poet?
A lonely heart through a night
What is behind the moon?
...
The moon drained white by day
lifts from the hill
where the old pear-tree fallen in storm
springs up in blossom still.
...
When I have baked white cakes
And grated green almonds to spread on them;
When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries
And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;
...
Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,--
With still tears showering and averted face,
Inexplicably fill'd with faint alarms:
...
July 1989
Alone I watched the Full Moon rise tonight.
The same Moon rose over you just hours ago.
Did you also watch it rise? Did clouds obscure the view?
...
The stars around the fair moon fade
Against the night,
When gazing full she fills the glade
And spreads the seas with silvery light.
...
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! May it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
...
"On the departure of rainy season bechanced is autumn with a heart-pleasingly bloomed lotus as her face, betokening the heart-pleasing face of a new bride, and the autumnal fields of white grass with whitish flowers as her apparel, which betoken the whitish bridal apparel of a new bride, and the amorously clucking clucks of swans that have just returned from Lake Maanasa as rains have gone, are the jingling anklets of autumn, which betoken the delightful jingles of anklets of new bride, and now the rice is ready to ripe and thus the tenuous stalks of rice, which have their necks a little bent down, betoken the obeisant face of a new docile bride...
"Blanched is the earth with whitish grass and the nights with silvery and coolant moonbeams of the moon, and the rivers with white swans, lakes with white-lotuses, and that forest up to its fringes with whitish jasmine flowers and with somewhat whitish seven-leaved banana plants that are swagging under the weight of their flowers...
...
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
...
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
...
1 I shall not wonder more, then,
2 But I shall know.
3 Leaves change, and birds, flowers,
...