Matsurika (Jasmine)

Gracefully you roll up the gauzy curtains
Of my clouded, weary heart, choked with grief, and brilliantly
One day your face is revealed in the languid, seductive
Brightness of poppies blooming in fields of enticement.

Even as, allured by whisperings that melt my soul,
I embrace you again, I feel I shall weep.
The most secred of sorrows, the trap of dreams-in your arms
my aching arms are imprisoned.

Again, one evening, I could not see you, but there came
The indefinable soft rustling of your spun-silk garment--
That was I all I heard, and my heart at that moment was riven.

In a room at night fragrant with the scent of jasmine
Your smile, mingled in that odor, sought my wound,
Sank into it, perfumed it, elegantly, again and again.

--------------------------------- ---Kambara Ariake (1876-1947)

Piano - D. H. Lawrence


Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

This is lovely Portokal

Que rien ne pèse plus à tes mains plus légères
Avant que de nouveau tu rouvres les paupières
Songe que notre vie à nous emprunte et mêle
Son sable fugitif à la grêve éternelle.

*

Henri de Regnier

The Lorelei (Heinrich Heine)

I cannot explain the sadness
That´s fallen on my breast.
An old, old fable haunts me,
And will not let me rest.

The air grows cool in the twilight,
And softly the Rhine flows on;
The peak of a mountain sparkles
Beneath the setting sun.

More lovely than a vision,
A girl sits high up there;
Her golden jewelry glistens,
She combs her golden hair.

With a comb of gold she combs it,
And sings an evensong;
The wonderful melody reaches
A boat, as it sails along.

The boatman hears, with an anguish
More wild than ever known;
He´s blind to the rocks around him;
His eyes are for her alone.

--At last the waves devoured
The boat, and the boatman´s cry;
And this she did with her singing,
The golden Lorelei.

Issa ( 1762-1826 )

Haiku

snow melts,
---and the village is overflowing -
------with children.

Fleas, lice

Fleas, lice,
a horse peeing
near my pillow.

Translated by Robert Hass

Matsuo Basho

THE TRIPLE FOOL.
by John Donne

--- I am two fools, I know,
--- For loving, and for saying so
------ In whining poetry ;
But where´s that wise man, that would not be I,
------ If she would not deny ?
Then as th´ earth´s inward narrow crooked lanes
--- Do purge sea water´s fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
--- Through rhyme´s vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
--- But when I have done so,
--- Some man, his art and voice to show,
------ Doth set and sing my pain ;
And, by delighting many, frees again
------ Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
--- But not of such as pleases when ´tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
--- For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

Gunnar Ekelöf Swedish poet 1938-1959.

Here on the shore

The silence of the deep night is vast
It is not troubled by the sounds of people
who are eating each other here on the shore

And I can hear
the amazing rustle
of ships that pass
on the sea out there

These ships, are they so innocent?
Sometimes you hear a prolonged howl from out there
- as if. . . . if. . . .

---------------------------------------------------

When you have come as far

When you have come as far in meaninglessness as I
each word is interesting again:
Finds in the loam
that you turn with an archeological spade:
The little word "you"
perhaps a bead
that once hung from someone´s neck
The grand word "I"
perhaps a flint shard
that someone in his toothlessness used to scrape his tough
meat

---------------------------------------------------------

Solitude

That solitude, the will to solitude
the need for solitude, finally
principle and dogma of solitude-
that this means poverty
I admit!
But isn´t necessary to be poor in spirit?
To contract into something great!
Only he who is rich can afford poverty
and he, who hears the voice, silence.

Love Song: I and Thou

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage´s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
It held. It settled plumb.
level, solid, square and true
for that one great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it I sawed it
I nailed it and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can´t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.
------------------- Alan Dugan