Hokku 20
"Let day pass,
"Let night break," —
So the frogs sing morning and eve.
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Hokku 16
Are the fallen stars
Returning up the sky?-
The dews on the grass.
Hokku 12
Leaves blown,
Birds flown away.
I wander in and out the Hall of Autumn.
Hokku 11
At eve,
By a grass-made hut,
The winds pass on.
Saying something to the rice-plant leaves.
I am knocking at the door of Life, —
Is nobody in?
Cobweb
It joins a dark pine to another tree;
And shining through its bones a ray of sun
Unearthed it like some graceful skeleton,
Or an unfinished frame of faery
As frail as words. Not even thought could be
More carefully, more delicately spun —
As fine a thread as that invisible one
Of speech and silence between you and me.
The spider lurks there blotched and poisonous.
He is the monstrous god who can at will
Belch beauty from a stomachful of spit;
And dreaming of that silver binding us,
Which Love unwinds and weaves, my heart grows still
And cries that Love is lovely — isn't it ?
Humiliation
How nakedly an animal
Lies down on earth to die,
Unmindful of the shining air,
And unashamed of sky.
But men and women under roofs
Draw shades and hush the floor,
And furtively they lay their dead
Behind a darkened door.
Lifetime
I am the river, I have been immense
With hope, great as the inner heart of spring-
The reeds have huddled to my whimpering
Amid the noon-time's staleness and suspense.
Between the ruins of magnificence.
Stained and autumnal, mournfully I sing,
And then among my white beards muttering
Grow old, and sleep into indifference.
I have no returning, onward is best.
Close to the dark, sweet earth in every place.
But with the sky's mark hidden in my breast.
And a star's shadow falling on my face.
Where shining spaces wait to fill with me,
Death is the beautiful and bitter sea.
Trespasser
I am among the careless dead
Who do not rise to see
Why I should hurry through their flowers
Beneath their willow tree,
Nor lift their hands from off their breasts
To beckon me.
But though I run so lightly through
The myrtle's rambling mass,
And though my feet step silently
Above the blowing grass.
And though they do not stir or speak —
They know I pass.
Driftwood
Life gave me these —
The beauty that can only branch in trees
Who are content, knowing the roots' securities —
The strength to stand up straight and bear the wings
Of a brave ship on her adventurings —
The bitterness of being broken, being tossed
And driven on the waters and the winds, and lost
In desolation, mist and stinging foam,
And being beaten back at last to home.
Now love has kindled me —
Strange that my beauty of a dear, green tree
Should vanish into smoke and memory.
Strange that the strength, magnificently mine.
Should fall before the flame without a sign.
But oh most strange that bitterness should be
Drawn up in color after color out of me.
From a Chinese Vase
Roaming the lonely garden, he and I
Pursue each other to the fountain's brim,
And there grow quiet — woman and butterfly —
The frail clouds beckon me, the flowers tempt him.
My thoughts are rose-like, beautiful and bright,
Folded precise as petals are, and wings
Uplift my dreaming suddenly in flight,
And fill my soul with jagged colorings.
The waters tangle like a woman's hair
Above the dim reflection of a face —
He thinks those are his own lips laughing there,
His own breasts curving under silk and lace.
How shall we know our real selves, he and I,
Which is the woman, which the butterfly?
Sandy Star: Exit
No, his exit by the gate
Will not leave the wind ajar;
He will go when it is late
With a misty star.
One will call, he cannot see;
One will call, he will not hear;
He will take no company
Nor a hope or fear.
We shall smile who loved him so--
They who gave him hate will weep;
But for us the winds will blow
Pulsing through his sleep.
Scintilla
I kissed a kiss in youth
Upon a dead man’s brow;
And that was long ago,--
And I’m a grown man now.
It’s lain there in the dust,
Thirty years and more;--
My lips that set a light
At a dead man’s door.
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