My First Full-Length Li Bai

We Say Here Our Last Goodbye

Blue mountains to the north of town.
White water to the east of town.
We stop here for a last goodbye.
Thistledown flies a thousand li.
Now you must be a floating cloud,
and your old friend, the setting sun.
Waving, each goes his separate way.
Parting horses nicker and neigh.
--Li Bai

First Ghazal

When the forsythia burst into blathering flame
and the star stopped over the barn, she knew.

When she would not give him a lock of hair
or the apple from under her arm, he knew.

Thousands of hogs. The woodlot, the garden gone.
This was not the farm she knew.

Oh well, he had his harness to mend,
and she, her socks to darn, he knew.

They'd come to her for a garlic wreath
or the words to that charm she knew.

Ron would have kept to he and she,
but his name was proper form, he knew.

The Wonder-Filled World of the Fifth-Grade Boy

Every day
of a cold and snowless week
we paused at Eastway and Royalton
where a big, round, bright green hocker
was frozen to the walk,
then continued on
through the bejeweled morning
to school.

Some Disconnected Thoughts on Immigration

1.

Calling illegal immigrants "undocumented" makes it sound as if there is merely a technical problem with their papers not being in order. This may be desired or desirable--but it is not the case. They are illegal. I think the analogy is supposed to be that of changing from from a pejorative to a neutral term. But "illegal" is not a pejorative way of saying "undocumented." It is objectively different--and more accurate.



2.

I have a good deal of sympathy for most people who are here illegally. Most have come for no nefarious purpose, but merely to work. And by our lack of serious enforcement, over several decades, of immigration laws both in terms of stopping people from coming and of preventing businesses from employing them, we have made coming here illegally seem more like part of a game than a criminal act. So now many have been here for years or decades, mostly as decent members of their communities and as cheap and docile labor for our business enterprises. Thus many now have deep roots here. They are enmeshed in networks of family and friends, some of whom are legal, some not.

His Sweet Smile

Amazing,
said the former Barbeque King,
looking up with his sweet smile
from where he'd fallen in urine,
after all that's happened to me,
how many people
still
want
to come by and talk.

Try It in Japanese

法に関する一考察中国と日本の詩ここに表示される私のバージョンが2つ以上の論評や各詩のリテラルの翻訳を読んで作られています。私も文学の翻訳を使用しましたが、私は好む。ああ、私もローマ字を有するか、私は元の韻律のより多くの意味を持つことができます。しかし、私は本当にわからない中国語や日本語のすべてでは、いくつかの単語を超えて。また、文字は完全に私には不透明です。

とにかく、私は実際にコメントを感謝し、私は中国人を読むことができません。それはピンのなら、私は非常に単純な文または2つをすることがあります。同様に、

Moored

Never remembering
the thing itself,
but only a previous memory
that was itself only a memory of it,
daily paying out a link
of chain, allowing you to recede
from that object of reminiscence,
yet keeping you tethered to it
where it lies behind, moored
in the dark.