Who is an American?

Regardless of their parentage, people who have lived here all their lives and are linguistically and culturally American are American. Law should acknowledge this fact. I would vote for the Dream Act, although the reality of these folks being our countrymen ought not to be conditioned upon their going to college or serving in the military. If they're PhD's, they're American PhD's and if they're criminals, they're American criminals. But if the bill passes it will likely be because it appeals to our sense of magnanimity. And that good feeling of granting citizenship to people who not quite fully entitled to it is bound up in those conditions.

On the other hand, a one-year-old who is deported along with its parents should be no more entitled to citizenship because it was born a week after its family came here than if had been born a week before. I'm inclined to think that changing the 14th Amendment to reflect this logic would cause more rancor than it's worth. But if we were starting from scratch, my view is that mere birth on American soil ought not to be sufficient qualification for citizenship.

Remains

And one will remain
the unseen sleeper
for the other,
still dressing in the winter dark.

Long after Li Shangyin

I write, my friend,
from far Bashan,
ringed with peaks,
the heart of the continent
if I came from here,
watching chill rain
gather leaves in swirling pools,
far from you, and home,
and the city by the eastern sea,
and imagine myself
on the hill above your house,
watching the two of us,
whenever we might meet again,
framed in your western window:
you light the lamp
and I begin to tell you
of cold rain on far Bashan
and of myself, here, ringed by mountains
and watching that rain,
more content now,
beheld in that uncertain future.

THREE TOLEDO POEMS WRITTEN IN VIRGINIA

I. In Summer, the Richmond Water is as Warm as a Last Swallow of Coffee

Where I come from
in NW Ohio
the guys would play baseball all day long,
and between innings and arguments
about missed flies and fouls and chicken claws
we'd all, Fat George and Stanley and Little Stanley,
run to the concrete fountain in center field
and drink
and splash on our sweaty heads
the water that on the hottest day
still came up cold
from the deep mains,
and recollected in us
the creak of trodden snow on a cold and cloudy day.
And so was our everyboy's summer
refreshed by the winter that underlay all.


II.

In Willys Park,
hard up against the Jeep plant,
when the tennis players,
tired of being pelted by balls,
stopped our Home Run Derby
and the guys with uniforms
chased us from the diamonds
and the water was too high
to look for rubbers on the island
in the creek at the foot of the sledding hill
and it was adult time at the pool,
we'd leave the bright field and,
going down into the damp woods,
sidle along the crossbar
of the wrought-iron fence above the dam
and emerge again
into the sunshine
of the cemetery
where the peacocks strutted and squalled
among the decades of dead Chinese.


III. In their Winding, the Roads Here in Hanover County May Go Anywhere

The mystery in the country there
is not on the roads
that each mile lie in parallel lines
and go on till they get somewhere,
nor in the fields all full
of black dirt and whitened stubble
or then of green corn or beets or beans,
but in the woodlots
back from the highway
that, unless you knew the farmer--
as I never did--
remained those middle-distance woods
always at the center
as you circled the square
you made
turning toward them at very crossroad.
And it was trees,
maybe elm or oak or sycamore,
if a wood was carried
by a creek out to the crown road.

Questions and Observations

To those who are disappointed with the slow pace of economic recovery and are therefore contemplating voting for Tea Party Republicans: Although it's possible to entertain the notion that letting those investment banks, insurance companies, and auto companies fail, and not providing money to keep police, firefighters, and teachers on the job would ultimately be better for the economy, it's hard to imagine how the economy would be better right now. Surely we would still be in the painful, bullet-biting phase. In fact, the only plausible policy that would have made the economy palpably better right now is the larger stimulus advocated by the Paul Krugman camp--even if that policy would in the end result in greater disaster. So sure, you may think that recent government actions have been destructive of the underlying strength of the economy and its long-range prospects, but your preferred policies would not have winched us out of the ditch yet.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. It strikes me that the people who believe that gender roles are largely culturally determined are pretty much the same people who are most likely to be sympathetic to the transgendered--those who are outwardly one sex but inwardly feel themselves to be the other sex, and who have the personality and innate preferences of that other sex. I don't really know what is correct or that these two notions can't ultimately be reconciled, but they do at least seem to be contradictory. And no one much notices.


2. It feels right that someone ought to be able to start an honest business with little interference and charge what she wants for her goods or services and that she ought to be able to profit or not depending on her work skills and business acumen. And further, it feels right that she should be able to hire workers for what they are worth to her or sell shares or take out loans to raise money for expansion. And beyond that, those persons holding those shares or loans ought to able to exchange those shares or loans for other things of value. All of this seems sensible and feels right.

But when the elaboration of this process results in some people making many, many, many multiples of what some others make doing full-time, legitimate work, to me, it feels wrong. And I have no problem with the idea of society rebalancing outcomes to some degree. But if it happens that all attempts to do this make the above-described economic system unworkable, and if any other system is too unproductive or requires unacceptable coercion, then we may have to accept wildly inequitable outcomes. But we should not celebrate the morality of massive inequality nor cease looking for workable methods of redress.

While a just society may reluctantly decide that war is necessary in some circumstances, the celebration of the war's attendant slaughter is a mark of that society's barbarity.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. A question for those who want no measures strong enough to actually stop illegal immigrants from coming across the southern border and no serious attempts to make them leave once they're here: If you want a completely open border, please say so. And also, do you want to stop screening people who want to come here from places other than Latin America? If not, why not? You don't like Romanians or Nepalese? And there are Iraqis, who, having served us as translators, are trying to come here for their own safety. And they are mired in months and years of red tape.
So hey, if you think people should be able to move freely around the globe and settle anywhere they want without restriction, let's talk. Certainly the nation-state with controlled, well-defined borders has caused a lot of mischief in the world.

2. I heard a discussion today of a report by, I think, the Pew Research Center, that talked about "unauthorized" immigrants rather than "undocumented" or "illegal" immigrants. An effort to find a term that UnAmerican one-worlders and hateful nativist bigots can agree on?


3. Do you think the Arizona legislature should pass a resolution encouraging the President and Congress to maintain the weakness of the economy, since that's been our most effective tool in slowing illegal immigration?

Language Crank

Turning nouns into verbs is an often useful practice that has a long and honorable history in English. For example, a few decades ago we made "parent" into "to parent," and that has worked well. For women, the word has a different emphasis than "to mother." And for men, "to father" has a completely different meaning. But I can't see any reason to make "reference" into "to reference" when we already have "to refer to," except to annoy those of us whom it strikes as incorrect. Perhaps the usage has an academic or bureaucratic origin, because I don't hear it from the uneducated rabble, but mostly from radio and tv commentators and their newsmaking interviewees. In a phrase such as "...the law she______earlier in her remarks...," they feel compelled to insert "referenced" rather than "spoke about," "mentioned," "explained," "expounded upon," "alluded to," or other possibilities that might give more precision and linguistic variety to their commentaries.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. I remember reading Herodotus and histories of the Byzantine Empire and thinking that whatever the manifold horrors of the modern world, there really are some barbarities we've left behind--like, you know, cutting off noses and ears.

                                             


2. It puzzles me how people who believe in a God more petty and vindictive than we would find admirable or even tolerable in a mere mortal can insist so strenuously on the loving goodness of that deity. Similarly, how come the people who say,"God is so good," whenever you tell them about something swell that's happened to you, don't also say, "God is so nasty." when you tell them about something not so swell? Been reading too much Aquinas, maybe.


3. I guess that building a Muslim community center two blocks from the site of the twin towers is offensive in the sense that a lot of people are offended by it. And perhaps that's enough--at some point going ahead with something one has the right to do isn't worth it if you get too many people foaming-at-the-mouth-angry about it. And I suppose that on the odd chance that it really is a secret plan to plop a mosque down on the site of a glorious triumph of Islam over the infidels, I'm offended too. But you know, this plan was public for months without anyone being very much exercised about it until we began to be told that we should be up in arms about a "Ground Zero mosque."

A Poem for My Annual Day of Pantheism

God, who is eyeless,
sees through me.
God, who is wingless,
flies through thee,
great heron skimming the water.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. A court decision today pretty much prevented the use of federal funding for any embryonic stem cell research, contrary to one of Obama's first executive orders. This includes cells from already-dead embryos. As policy, I don't like this. But I don't have an opinion about the correctness of the judge's decision, not knowing enough about the particulars of the law in question or the reasoning behind the decision. Ever notice how closely people's reactions to court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, follow their politics? Face it, folks, the constitution doesn't mandate everything you love and proscribe everything you hate.


2. Do you really want to keep a gay guy's partner of 30 years from getting social security death benefits? Really? On the other hand, Do we really want to regard those two guys as just an incidentally infertile couple?


3. If you think that abortion should be illegal except in the case of incest or rape, you can't at the same time believe that an embryo is a human person like the rest of us out in the world. Try this as a thought experiment: You are a monster if you kill your four year old because she causes you too much stress--unless the stress results from her father being also her grandfather. In that case, go ahead and drown her and chuck her in the dumpster.
If the outcome is horrible and the reasoning is logical, then the premises are horrible as well. Not that it's personally a problem for me, given that I don't hold with the premises in the first place.


4. You think you have not an iota of racism? that your believing that Obama is a Muslim Nazi has nothing to do with his being black, or Halfrican-American or whatever? Think of this: If you're white, how many black people live in the neighborhood you most recently moved from and how many live in the neighborhood you live in now? My guess is that how much more vitriolic and unreasonable the hatred of Obama is than the already unreasonable and vitriolic hatred of Bill Clinton was is a pretty good measure of the proportion of racism in the mix.

A Schopenhauer Variation

The oscillation between the unpleasant and the insufficiently anodyne.

Falling Quiet or Where is Indirection?

Having set
your prayer wheel in the swift stream,
You lie back,
lolling on the bank,
dangle a toe in the water
and fall
to work.

This is So Cool--English Minus William the Conqueror and the Preference for Making Technical Terms from Greek and Latin Rather than from Native Sources

Here is Poul Anderson's essay "Uncleftish Beholding" ("Atomic
Theory"), reprinted from the revised edition appearing in his
collection _All One Universe_.
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made
of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began
to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that
watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link
together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we
knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and
barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such
as aegirstuff and helstuff.
The firststuffs have their being as motes called *unclefts*.
These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a
tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most
unclefts link together to make what are called *bulkbits*. Thus,
the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the
sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some
kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling
together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet
more yokeways.) When unlike clefts link in a bulkbit, they make
*bindings*. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts
with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the
forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand thousand or more
unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and
chokestuff.
At first is was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that
could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made
up of lesser motes. There is a heavy *kernel* with a forward
bernstonish lading, and around it one or more light motes with
backward ladings. The least uncleft is that of ordinary
waterstuff. Its kernel is a lone forwardladen mote called a
*firstbit*. Outside it is a backwardladen mote called a
*bernstonebit*. The firstbit has a heaviness about 1840-fold that
of the bernstonebit. Early worldken folk thought bernstonebits
swing around the kernel like the earth around the sun, but now we
understand they are more like waves or clouds.
In all other unclefts are found other motes as well, about as
heavy as the firstbit but with no lading, known as *neitherbits*.
We know a kind of waterstuff with one neitherbit in the kernel
along with the firstbit; another kind has two neitherbits. Both
kinds are seldom.
The next greatest firststuff is sunstuff, which has two firstbits
and two bernstonebits. The everyday sort also has two neitherbits
in the kernel. If there are more or less, the uncleft will soon
break asunder. More about this later.
The third firststuff is stonestuff, with three firstbits, three
bernstonebits, and its own share of neitherbits. And so it goes,
on through such everyday stuffs as coalstuff (six firstbits) or
iron (26) to ones more lately found. Ymirstuff (92) was the last
until men began to make some higher still.
It is the bernstonebits that link, and so their tale fastsets how
a firststuff behaves and what kinds of bulkbits it can help make.
The worldken of this behaving, in all its manifold ways, is
called *minglingken*. Minglingers have found that as the
uncleftish tale of the firststuffs (that is, the tale of
firststuffs in their kernels) waxes, after a while they begin to
show ownships not unlike those of others that went before them.
So, for a showdeal, stonestuff (3), glasswortstuff (11),
potashstuff (19), redstuff (37), and bluegraystuff (55) can each
link with only one uncleft of waterstuff, while coalstuff (6),
flintstuff (14), germanstuff (22), tin (50), and lead (82) can
each link with four. This is readily seen when all are set forth
in what is called the *roundaround board of the firststuffs*.
When an uncleft or a bulkbit wins one or more bernstonebits above
its own, it takes on a backward lading. When it loses one or
more, it takes on a forward lading. Such a mote is called a
*farer*, for that the drag between unlike ladings flits it. When
bernstonebits flit by themselves, it may be as a bolt of
lightning, a spark off some faststanding chunk, or the everyday
flow of bernstoneness through wires.
Coming back to the uncleft itself, the heavier it is, the more
neitherbits as well as firstbits in its kernel. Indeed, soon the
tale of neitherbits is the greater. Unclefts with the same tale
of firstbits but unlike tales of neitherbits are called
*samesteads*. Thus, everyday sourstuff has eight neitherbits with
its eight firstbits, but there are also kinds with five, six,
seven, nine, ten, and eleven neitherbits. A samestead is known by
the tale of both kernel motes, so that we have sourstuff-13,
sourstuff-14, and so on, with sourstuff-16 being by far the most
found. Having the same number of bernstonebits, the samesteads of
a firststuff behave almost alike minglingly. They do show some
unlikenesses, outstandingly among the heavier ones, and these can
be worked to sunder samesteads from each other.
Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels
break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the
*half-life*, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the
samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as
*lightrotting*. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of
sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel. A kernel may
spit out two firstbits with two neitherbits, that is, a sunstuff
kernel, thus leaping two steads back in the roundaround board and
four weights back in heaviness. It may give off a bernstonebit
from a neitherbit, which thereby becomes a firstbit and thrusts
the uncleft one stead up in the board while keeping the same
weight. It may give off a *forwardbit*, which is a mote with the
same weight as a bernstonebit but a forward lading, and thereby
spring one stead down in the board while keeping the same weight.
Often, too, a mote is given off with neither lading nor
heaviness, called the *weeneitherbit*. In much lightrotting, a
mote of light with most short wavelength comes out as well.
For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked
on as a mote, the *lightbit*. We have already said by the way
that a mote of stuff can behave not only as a chunk, but as a
wave. Down among the unclefts, things do not happen in steady
flowings, but in leaps between bestandings that are forbidden.
The knowledge-hunt of this is called *lump beholding*.
Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the
same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between
them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside
of the haste of light.
By shooting motes into kernels, worldken folk have shifted
samesteads of one firststuff into samesteads of another. Thus did
they make ymirstuff into aegirstuff and helstuff, and they have
afterward gone beyond these. The heavier firststuffs are all
highly lightrottish and therefore are not found in the
greenworld.
Some of the higher samesteads are *splitly*. That is, when a
neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal
ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free
neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When
this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the
whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.
With enough strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to
togethermelt. In the sun, through a row of strikings and
lightrottings, four unclefts of waterstuff in this wise become
one of sunstuff. Again some weight is lost as work, and again
this is greatly big when set beside the work gotten from a
minglingish doing such as fire.
Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and
kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to
do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed
wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain.
Soothly we live in mighty years!

Fisselig

Here's a word many of you may find useful: "fisselig." German for "flustered to the point of incompetence by the attentions of a supervisor." In my case it's more outside auditors, surveyors, accreditors than internal supervisors. But I think it still works.

Remaining Impenetrable, Does Mystery Offer or Withhold Itself?

However naked
she appears,
the fan dancer
will have left the stage
and you will have seen the show
with nothing
having been revealed.

Flitter

Alone in the mirror
the moment my father's smile
flits across my face.

Supersession

We five, alone on the dark hill
of the ruined and superseded temple,
looking down on the lights of Yogyakarta,
and returning to town
riding on the backs of hired motors,
their headlights sweeping the rice fields
from winding roads.

Health Care Jobs Program?

Indeed. Our new health care system will essentially be the same Rube Goldberg machine we have now with a few improvements. Most of the waste will be still be there. There's a whole lotta people in the health care biz who don't do no health care. And not only that, the job description of many of those folks is pretty much to harass and waste the time of those few of us who actually take care of sick people. It's sort of a Republican make-work program. My only reservation about Dr Ross's article is about Medicare itself: Medicare is great for patients--there's no problem getting reasonable services approved. But, at least in home care, Medicare works real hard to find a way to not pay providers for services already rendered.
http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20100808/OPINION04/8070349

Language Crank

"Homegrown" is tasty and...homey; "local," bland and merely descriptive.

After a Visit to a Country Where it Never Snows

In this latitude
wake to distant hammering
only in summer.

英語の日本の古典の詩

私は古典の短歌詩人たち(特にオノいいえの小町と和泉Shikibu)が好きです。 私は、あなたがそれらの仕事のバージョンが好きであることを望みます。 質問、コメント、あるいは批評〔非難〕が歓迎されます。

英文的中國古典的詩

有關我的著作的其中很多個評論在中文裡。這樣我嘗試用中文編寫一份小邀請。謝謝到的每個人評論了。問題，更長評論，或批評也是受歡迎的。我將樂意回答，如果我能。大部分我的著作是我的翻譯，或在英語中的版本， Du Fu，李 Bai，其他的中。但是我也編寫其他事情。如果你在尋找中國詩和你在第一個頁不找任何，看下一個夫婦頁。你可能很快將找有些。

And Even More Compressed

This world, I try not to see,
still dogs me like a shadow.
--Minamoto no Toshiyori

Another Tanka I've Translated into a Haiku--What Am I Missing?

Foam on the water
I am, that still wants to live
for a thousand years.
--Otomo no Yakamochi

The Tortures of the Damned II

Those who believe that, in answer to their prayers, God will redirect the lives of others, will spend each day in Hell broken down on a lonely road. As they pray for help, a car will appear and they'll be offered a ride. One day the car will be involved in a fiery crash at the first intersection. The next day, the driver will be a pervert with terrible hygiene. The next day the driver will kick them out of the car when they praise the wrong god for their deliverance. The next day...

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.

Rhubarb

I wanted rhubarb
in Virginia. Everywhere,
weeds are what grow well.

A Game of Telephone

A Note on the law of my version of the Chinese and Japanese poetry in here has produced two or more reading or writing comments on the translation of each poem. I use a good literary translation, but I'd rather not. Oh, I like to have the Roman alphabet, so I can have more rhythm of the original. But I really do not know in China or Japan are, beyond a few words. And the characters are completely opaque to me. In any case, I really appreciate the advice, but I can not read Chinese. If the alphabet, I might make a very simple word or two. Like this, "Nide shi bu hao," I understand this.



These are the computer translation is a previous post. I've got a friend who translated for me something. And I'm running the other posts online translation services - the output through. Usually understood, but occasionally puzzling.


So all the above is a back translation: the Chinese translation of my original post run back through the web translation service.

阿郵政翻譯

我的一個注記法版本的中國和日本詩歌出現在這裡已經製作了兩個或更多的評論閱讀或文字翻譯的每首詩。我用文學翻譯的好，但我寧願不要。哦，我太喜歡有羅馬拼音，所以我可以有更多的韻律感原。但我真的不知道在中國或日本都，超出了幾句話。和字符是完全不透明的，我要。無論如何，我真的很感激的意見，但我不能閱讀中文。如果是拼音，我可能會作出一個很簡單的兩句話。像這樣的“尼德市布浩，”我明白這個道理。

以上是電腦翻譯是一個以前的職位。我已經得到一個朋友為我翻譯一些東西。而且我運行的其他職位通過在線翻譯服務 - 輸出通常是理解的，但偶爾令人費解。

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.

How few the moments
that my gaze has lit upon
the flowers of spring.

How many the months and days
that I have passed without fruit.
--Fujiwara no Okikase

Ada Banyak Warung

Apple slices
in coarse sea salt.
Sardines
in bitter chocolate.
An avocado shake.
What savor would these have
taken at a food stall
of bamboo
and blue plastic tarp
at the corner
of Jalan Kaliurang
and Jalan Yacaranda?

Another Renga-Like Poem

Dark Sandusky Bay,
Cold across the curving bridge.
Air conditioned car.

Sweet smell of cherries.
Pissing on the pink tablet
in the urinal.

Sweating, cutting grass.
Moldy turd beneath the hedge.
Old dog dead since March.

To stare or glass no
bird calls in the meadow tree.
Deer bark at wood's edge.

Peek up from my book.
A blur through reading glasses,
long hair and long legs.

Clarence, Sylvester.
Like our grandfathers' names, mine
senesces with me.

At a time like this,
there are no words to express
how I feel about.

Though God still the wheel,
still the car turns about it,
this engine of change.

Bone-deep pressure sore.
Waved away again, two flies
land on his penis.

Return to the marsh
or not: the crane won't be still
on the gravel path.

From across the stream,
wind extends a willow thread
to brush a shoulder.

Ruby lay with me
and beneath my fevered hand
nosed her silky head.

Isolation room,
fourth floor: ladybug enters
on my yellow gown.

Sunrise false cadence
makes of fireflies at twilight.
Play on, then, play on.



I don't much like some of the stanzas, but I find linked verse very hard to revise. Recalling that I work as a nurse might be an aid to understanding at some points.

Back to Poetry

In Deep Bamboo


Picking out tunes on my lute,
whistling a bit of something,
I sit here in so much light,
alone and facing the moon.
--Wang Wei

A Note on Method

My versions of the Chinese and Japanese poems appearing here have been produced by reading two or more commentaries or literal translations of each poem. I've used literary translations as well, but I prefer not to. Oh, and I like having romanizations too, so I can have more sense of the original prosody. But I don't really know Chinese or Japanese at all, beyond a few words. And characters are wholly opaque to me.

Anyway, I really appreciate comments, but I can't read Chinese. If it's in pinyin, I might make out a very simple sentence or two. Like, "Nide shi bu hao," I'd get that.

Dueling Abortion Ads: Both Wrong

The Tim Tebow bit most people have seen or heard about. The other one is a response from Planned Parenthood available only on the web.

Tebow first. It's great that his mom's decision turned out well and he's healthy and happy. But almost certainly some women have gotten similar advice, rejected it, and had a horrible outcome--assuming that you don't already believe that having had an abortion is in itself a horrible outcome. Also, the story gets much of its emotional punch from seeing Tim's embryo as actually being Tim, rather than, say, a self-actualizing recipe for Tim. What if the mom's story was, "I had a really bad headache that night, but..." So what's your favorite link in the chain of causation?

So now for the Planned Parenthood ad. It's just off the point. The ad has two guys saying that they have young daughters and that they hope that the girls grow up to be women who are able to choose what they want to do with their own bodies. But you can't get to where you are asking whether a woman should have choice in the matter or not until you establish that a embryo or fetus isn't essentially the same as a post-natal human. As a thought experiment, let's say we're in an alternate universe in which a neighbor of a woman having sex may occasionally end up magically miniaturized and in suspended animation inside that woman's womb. Do you think that you'd want your daughter to grow up to have the choice of aborting your drinking buddy, Fred, from next door? Nope, so first you have to establish that an unborn baby is a different sort of thing from Fred. But it's not all or nothing. If you can establish that the unborn baby is different, then you can argue whether a woman's control over her body should extend to aborting it.

By the way, I'm quite aware that a good deal of anti-abortion/pro-life talk has a considerable odor of misogyny about it. But that says more about the people who are talking than about the logic of what they are saying.

Books and Cigars

On the radio several years ago I heard a story about cigar makers in Florida. This was several decades ago, I think. Anyway, while they worked, there was someone who read books to them all day, classics, all kinds of stuff. Can't remember how this happened, whether their union paid for it or extracted it as a benefit from their employer. Or maybe the company did it on its own as a morale booster. Now that's my kind of job--minus the carcinogenic aspects. Maybe the job itself wasn't very satisfying, but it was it was quiet enough to allow for that big literary bonus.

Another reason I find this especially interesting is that my great grandfather was a cigar maker here in Toledo, Ohio. Although he died in the thirties, ten years or more before I was born, I imagine I would have heard if he had had this unusual perk with his job. Just think of how his progeny might have have benefitted if he had spent all his working life being read to. And think of how much better educated we would be if this were the accompaniment to every job that would accommodate it.

My ideal job--the reader, of course. ...The Tale of Genji...Janet Evanovitch...Moby Dick...Charles Bukowski...Nagarjuna...Douglas Hofstadter...

On Scott Roeder

Yeah, Scott Roeder is a dangerous nut. But not because he passed from peaceful protest and legitimate political dissent into murderous violence. If you believe what he apparently believes, that an embryo is ensouled at the moment of conception and thus has the same status as the moral actors out in the world, then violence against abortionists may be ethically allowed or even necessary. Unless you are a complete pacifist, if you see one class of people being killed at the whim of others, wouldn't you feel justified in using force to protect them? Even if it's against the law? Even if the law is democratically enacted? So no, Scott Roeder is a dangerous nut not because he is violent per se, but because he has looney beliefs that, once held, lead quite logically to violence in the present circumstances.

We should be grateful that the tens of millions who think they believe what Scott Roeder believes do not believe so wholeheartedly, so completely without a scintilla of rational doubt, that they too follow those beliefs to where they so clearly beckon.

One more thought. In his testimony, Mr. Roeder stated that he has been very much exercised by the issue of abortion ever since he became a Christian in, I think, 1992. My guess is that he wasn't an atheist or a Muslim before 1992. Most probably, he was something like an indifferent Methodist or Presbyterian. I might be wrong about Mr. Roeder, but this is the larger point: In recent years, those in the fundamentalist/evangelical camp have begun to refer to themselves as Christians in a way that at least implicitly excludes other Christians. I find their arrogation of the term to themselves alone offensive, though I am not a Christian myself. Tell me you haven't heard a conversation like this: "Hey, I really like that new orientee. I think she'll do a great job." "Yes, me too. And she's a Christian, you know." You can be sure that "Christian" here does not include, say, "Catholic" or "Lutheran."

The Tortures of the Damned

Those who have persecuted others for the purpose of protecting God--Whom they believe to be omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect in all others ways as well--from the pain of being insulted or misunderstood will be consigned to a hell soundless but for scornful laughter.

What is marriage for? The answer to this question should determine what we think about same-sex marriage. If marriage is for legally recognizing life partners and giving them a suite of benefits, then we are discriminating against same-sex couples by not allowing them access to this institution. They are clearly capable of the same affections and the same aspirations for their lives together as heterosexual couples.

If, on the other hand, marriage is for encouraging people who make children together to be coupled and to stay coupled to raise those children, then in this respect there is a clear and meaningful difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples. And therefore nondiscrimination should not be required either legally or morally.

Does this seem to you a reasonable approach to the problem?

In the Mountains

White stones stick up from Bramble Brook.
Red leaves sparse against a cold sky.
No rain now on the mountain path.
My clothes wet from the high green brush.
--Wang Wei