from Tsurezuregusa

Whatever you may think of the socio-political wisdom of the this passage, you may be surprised that it is from Essays in Idleness by Kenko, a 14th-century Japanese poet, courtier, and Buddhist monk:

I believe...that it would be better, instead of imprisoning thieves and concerning ourselves only with punishing crimes, to run the country in such a way that no man would ever be hungry or cold. When a man lacks steady employment, his heart is not steady, and in extremity he will steal. As long as the country is not properly governed and people suffer from cold and hunger, there will never be an end to crime. It is pitiful to make people suffer, to force them to break the law, and then to punish them.
How then may we help the people? If those at the top would give up their luxury and wastefulness, protect the people, and encourage agriculture, those below would unquestionably benefit greatly. The real criminal is the man who commits a crime even though he has a normal share of food and clothing.

Two Tang Poems

Grasses grow rank around Red Bird Bridge.
Sun sets in the street of mansions.
Swallows from peeling painted eaves
swoop across the doorways of common folk.
--Liu Yuxi




On the Qinhuai River

With moonlight on sand and mist on cold water,
I tie up by a tavern on the river.
I hear a girl sing, with nothing of his grief,
the captive king's "Blossom of the Inner Court."
--Du Mu

Lumen

Your path,
you think,
is a dry straw
driven through the earthly garden,
a straw through which you are drawn
from desert to desert
by the sucking breath of God,
and that dim lumen
a midnight alley
through the middle of a block of the Tenderloin,
into which a bar fan blows jazz and smoke and beer,
a warm breeze heavy
with the smell of estrus and durian,
with the cries of monkeys and toucans,
with communion in Lao and Mandarin and Quechua.

Another Renga-Like Sequence

That one hummingbird
came at last to the cannas
before the first frost.

Oh, I see that twilight too
extends us rosy fingers.

Unused all these years,
college German spoken first
to an Afghan girl.

Feeling foreign everywhere,
why do I long to travel?

Turnpike overpass.
Treetop beyond the gray rail.
Left eye of the hawk.

What horrors for the handyman
behind his own toilet.

Beneath the table
the pastor's daughter and I
crawled through burning sand.

Rehobeth Beach: Twin towers,
unmarked, doors filled with concrete.

Called back at wood's edge.
Beyond, the sand spit between
calm bay, open lake.

I thought it was I that was
the cursor before the past.

Try to innervate
the scripture stylus: blaspheme?
worship? simply fail?

What stung me then, picking beans,
hands hidden among warm leaves?

A life so careful that each
scar has kept its story straight.

Soft, the Louisville Slugger
tapped three street signs into line.

How pleasantly long,
chatting with the old woman
at the wrong white house.

What temper leaves it unplayed
the piano does not tell.

Singular pleasure,
this book: five years on the shelf,
a blank checkout card.

My Khmer that amused Nareth
confounds her granddaughter Ray.

Should you say, "Aren't you
Frank's mom?" before or after
disimpacting her?

Who waved in the windshield glare
and drove on without stopping?

I lock up the store.
A passing drunk, punching me
weakly, staggers on.

The group-home boy ran until
he dropped naked on our lawn.

That night I said it
you had fallen in the snow
outside the playhouse.

A cute little number calls
lust right of the decimal.

Having written that
I see Nat's math problem as
Zeno's Paradox.

More urgency to leave makes
more checks of locks and burners.

Coming home in July
from nine years in Virginia,
our garden as green...

Not long after, they finished
the good road through the mountains.

Already three ducks
swimming in the borrow pit
by the half-built bridge.

And so it is this small space
that is left for all the rest.

Having Read JAPANESE DEATH POEMS

Written beforehand,
fearing that I would be too sick
at that time...this time.

Cedar Bog, Central Ohio, 1995

The downward slope is slight
from the parched field to this cool
and beautiful hell.

The Spring Song of Lady Night

The spring woods
hold flowers of great beauty.
The spring birds
cause thoughts of great grief.
The spring breeze has also great feeling,
blowing open
my gauzy silk skirt.
--Anon., 300-600 C.E.