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.

Complaint from His Lady's Chamber

She, who was in her rooms without sorrow,
turned out for spring, ascends the jade tower,
and, struck by a willow green in the field,
sighs for sending him off to seek titles.
--Wang Chiang-ling

All being samsara, what does it matter on which level of illusion Shiva dances?...that is, unless you're looking for your gods to show up on your level to smite your enemies and help you win the lottery.

No System Can Account for Itself, So What's the Price of Money?

There are several ways to refute the idea that the price for which something is exchanged is the sole measure of its economic value. Try this: Human beings have lived most of their history without money. The invention of money has been a great lubricant for economic activity. The existence of money has value, therefore, for society that is exterior to the money system. What is the price--how much would you pay--for entry to the money system?

Days fly by, winter drags on.
A plow scrapes by in the night.

Whenever concerns are raised about the widening disparities of income and wealth in this country, there are warnings from the right about igniting class warfare. I suppose that there's a little truth in that, but the likelihood of marching hedge fund managers to the guillotine or forcing plutocrats into exile in Shanghai is pretty small.

In actuality, at this time the most virulent class hatreds are between strata of the working/middle class. And these are not fomented by liberals. Until a few decades ago, those ill-paid and ill-treated by employers could hope to emulate their better-off fellows in union jobs by organizing and bargaining collectively for better pay and better treatment. But now that the tide of unionization has gone out, there is little of this hope. What remains is a lot of bitter envy.

Abuses of power by unions--burdensome work rules, pensions that bankrupt companies, protection of incompetent workers--are constantly pointed to. Examples are not hard to find. When I was was growing up, the folks in my extended family were probably the only Republican factory workers in Toledo. And there were stories about Uncle Freddy going to work with a knife in his waistband to protect himself against against union thugs. But any individual or institution with power is quite likely to eventually abuse it. Examples are not hard to find. A employer of much size at all will have greater power than its individual employees. We cannot strip them of the countervailing power that organizing gives them.

What public employees in Ohio should sacrifice to help alleviate the state's fiscal distress can certainly be negotiated. But those who recently gained political power would seek to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights even in the best of times. Do not let them use the present crisis to persuade us to let them do it.