Yoshiwara Lament
Golden peacocks
Under blossoming cherry-trees.
But on all the wide sea
There is no boat.
Sad poems
Sad poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Desolation
Under the plum-blossoms are nightingales ;
But the sea is hidden in an egg-white mist,
And they are silent.
Letter Written from Prison by Two Political Offenders
When a hero fails of his purpose.
His acts are regarded as those of a villain and a robber.
Pursuing liberty, suddenly our plans are defeated.
In public we have been seized and pinioned and caged for many days.
How can we find exit from this place ?
Weeping, we seem as fools ; laughing, as rogues.
Alas ! for us ; we can only be silent.
The Exiled Emperor
The birds sing to-day.
For to-morrow they will be flown
Many miles across the tossing sea.
A Burnt Offering
Because there was no wind.
The smoke of your letters hung in the air
For a long time ;
And its shape
Was the shape of your face.
My Beloved.
Again the New Year Festival
I HAVE drunk your health
In the red-lacquer wine cups,
But the wind-bells on the bronze lanterns
In my garden
Are corroded and fallen.
Peach-Colour to a Soap-Bubble
A MAN made a symphony
Out of the chords of his soul.
The notes ran upon the air like flights of chickadees,
They gathered together and hung
As bees above a syringa bush.
They crowded and clicked upon one another
In a flurry of progression.
And crashed in the simultaneous magnificence
Of a grand finale.
All this he heard.
But the neighbors heard only the croak
Of a wheezy, second-hand flageolet.
Forced to seek another lodging
He took refuge under the arch of a bridge.
For the river below him might be convenient
Some day.
From China
I thought : —
The moon.
Shining upon the many steps of the palace before me.
Shines also upon the chequered rice-fields
Of my native land.
And my tears fell
Like white rice grains
At my feet.
Middle Age
Like black ice
Scrolled over with unintelligible patterns by an ignorant skater
Is the dulled surface of my heart.
Aliens
The chatter of little people
Breaks on my purpose
Like the water-drops which slowly wear the rocks to powder.
And while I laugh
My spirit crumbles at their teasing touch.
November
The vine leaves against the brick walls of my house
Are rusty and broken.
Dead leaves gather under the pine-trees,
The brittle boughs of lilac-bushes
Sweep against the stars.
And I sit under a lamp
Trying to write down the emptiness of my heart.
Even the cat will not stay with me,
But prefers the rain
Under the meagre shelter of a cellar window.
A Year Passes
Beyond the porcelain fence of the pleasure garden,
I hear the frogs in the blue-green rice-fields ;
But the sword-shaped moon
Has cut my heart in two.
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