Did you know that the U.S. conducts a yearly immigration lottery for people who want to come here but have no particular qualifying criteria for admission? Several million people apply for about 20,000 slots. Because of some error in the lottery process, in 2010 the government invalidated the results after the 20,000 winners had been notified. In trying to rationalize immigration policies, we must remember that those policies apply not just to those crossing the southern border from Mexico without having gone through the prescribed application procedure.

A Compromise with the Dead

Who wanted to rest
in her most-mended panties
was laid down instead
in her muddy garden shoes.

Know God by the Perfection of His Works

There once was a world with no God
Where poodles came already shod
And the value of pi
Was slightly awry
So wheels just sank in the sod.


There was another world with no God
Where all the girls got named Todd
And no one could hear
For they shit through an ear
And so would just smile and nod.

Why Didn't They Just Say So in the First Place?

Recently heard an interview with the imam who wants to build the "Ground Zero Mosque." It was mentioned pretty much incidentally that he's a Sufi. A Sufi fer chrissake! It's like being afraid of Quakers or Unitarians because they're Christian like the KKK. Sufis, who are much more mystical than grimly legalistic, are widely persecuted by Muslim fundamentalists. Sufis are Whirling Dervishes, the poet Rumi, the late, and truly great, qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

LI BAI: My Versions in English

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.





As flowers bloom and leaves unfold,
my friend sets out, west for Guanling.
His solitary sail recedes,
vanishing where river meets sky.





Two versions of "Jade Stairs"

Resentment on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,
white dew soaks her silken hose.
Draw down then the crystal shade:
fall's moon glitters in its gems.



Stood Up on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,
white dew soaked your silken hem.
Draw down then the crystal shade:
moonlight glitters in its gems.




High Summer

Lazing in the mountain wood,
waving a white feather fan,
I get up, open my clothes,
hang my headband on a rock.
Green pine wind plays through my hair.




Wine with the Mountain Hermit

We drink amid the mountain flowers.
A cup, one more, and then another.
I'm in a stupor, you stagger off.
Come back with your lute, when you can.




Alone in My Cups

Drinking wine, unaware
of nightfall. Fallen flowers
fill the folds of my clothes.
Getting up and walking
to the moonlit river,
where no birds and few men
remain.

ONO no KOMACHI: My Versions in English of Three of her Poems

Imagining My Death and Cremation

Sad to end as just
a green haze drifting pale
over distant fields.




Falling, the long rain,
the color from the flower,
the eye through the world.




Should the stream whisper "come,"
like a severed reed,
I would float away,
adrift as my heart.

Reading George Will yesterday, I was reinforced in my opinion that, whatever NPR's putative bias, there is nothing it can do to satisfy a large segment of its critics on the right and remain a respectable news organization. Conservative commentators such as David Gergen do appear on public broadcasting and perhaps we should be hearing a bit more from people like David Frumm, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, Mona Charon, Thomas Sowell, or Ron Paul. But there are those who think "the other side of the story" that NPR should be giving us will come from folks who will tell us that Obama is the Anti-Christ who was born in Kenya and who has been engaged in a life-long plot to get himself elected president in order to destroy the American Republic. We could no longer take NPR seriously if it asked us to consider ideas like this from its commentators.