I'm not inclined to take seriously the pronouncements of people, right or left, about what's constitutional or unconstitutional as long as they see everything they like to be constitutional and everything they don't like to be unconstitutional. The constitution is a good document, a great document, but not a perfect document. In providing for amendment, the constitution itself implies that it is not an infallible guide to the good.

SPRING NIGHT: HEARING A FLUTE IN LOYANG

From which house, fleeting, invisible notes
mingling with the wind and filling the city?
Hearing that tune, A Willow Twig for Parting,
who would not dwell on thoughts of home?
     --Li Bai, my tr.

UNTITLED

Meeting is hard and parting is harder.
The east wind slackens and flowers wither.
The spring silk worm spins silk till it dies.
The wax candle sheds tears till it's ash.
Morning mirror, fretting over disordered hair.
Midnight chanting, not feeling the cold.
Penglai, the faerie mountain, is somewhere near.
Bluebird, would you spy it out for me.
     --Li Shanglin, my tr.

PASSING THE TEMPLE OF TEEMING FRAGRANCE

The Temple of Teeming Fragrance
measureless miles in summit clouds.
Ancient forest, a pathless way.
Deep mountains, directionless bell.
Spring water over jagged rocks.
Yellow sun on cool green pines.
Twilight, winding pool.  Quiet sitting
uncoils the poison dragon round the heart.
     --Wang Wei, my tr.

Dark, chilly, and rainy all day.  Perhaps it was a day like this when Ono no Komachi wrote

Falling, the long rain,

the color from the flower,

the eye through the world.

A tanka that I've managed to render as a haiku.  In Chinese literature two people separated in space are connected by their gazing at the same moon.  Perhaps, separated in time from Komachi and her original readers, we can make a similar connection with them through contemplation of an instance of the same phenomenon that Komachi pondered. 

9/11/11: REWRITTEN ALL THESE TEN YEARS AND NEVER RIGHT

Bomb them with Bud Lite.

Fill their skies with holograms of Vanessa del Rio.
Jam their transmissions with Bishop Sheen, Soupy Sales, Madalyn Murray,
and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Drop Burqas over them from attack helicopters.
Put up posters of their ankles in every post office.
When they surrender, send them Care Packages from    
     schoolboys and schoolgirls filled with centerfolds and Business Suit
     Barbies.
Take wounded prisoners to Drs. Johnson, Hanson, Jansen,
     Habib, and Horowitz.
Staff POW camps with Hindus and Buddhists and Free Methodists
     who guarded their local mosques.
Torture them with the home movies of the Trade Center dead.
Offer them my library card if they talk.
Bomb them with Bud Lite.
We'll keep the High Life.

AT THE LAUNDERMAT, READING WANG WEI'S "PASSING THE TEMPLE OF TEEMING FRAGRANCE"

Not wandering on cloud peaks
or through ancient, pathless forests,
as easy here to pass it by,
watching the comforter whirl
in the porthole of the commercial machine.
As hard to hear the temple bell
in the multidryer hum.
As easy, just as easy, to sit
and pacify the poison dragon of the heart