I have no beauty that is all my own,
No special loveliness carved out of me,
No glowing images wrought perfectly,
Splendour of flesh or delicacy of bone.
I am a pool, wherein you shall be shown
How wonderful and starlike you can be,
I am a mirror so that you may see
Yourself most intimately and alone.
When you lean to me and a dear, swift grace
Sways in my body, and my lips and eyes
Grow suddenly and exquisitely calm —
Oh tremble and look deep into my face
And see your own there, marvel and grow wise,
Touch me and cry, " How beautiful I am ! "
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?
Moon, somnolent, white,
Mirrored in a waveless sea,
What fickle mood of night
Urged thee from heaven to flee
And live in the dawnlit sea?
The sloping lines of your shoulders
Speak of Chinese pagodas.
They clash with your western face
Where child and courtesan
Clasp each other in a feigned embrace.
Life, to you, is a liquid mirror.
You stand with delicate, perpetual amazement,
Vainly seeking your reflection.
Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors...
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall...
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.
Even you, dark pool--
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
There are deep reflections
Of a fiery breath.
To the waiting forest
Death does not come creeping
As it comes to men;
It comes shouting, waving banners,
Burning out its way with torches,
Hanging garlands now and then.
All the green walls of your silence
Hung with crimson,
Even you, dark pool--
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
Darkness.
I stop to watch a star shine in the boghole----
A star no longer, but a silver ribbon of light.
I look at it, and pass on.
Shallow pools of water
Are drinking up the sky;
Chasms of cool blue-white
In the brown of the sands.
The clouds are in them,
The houses on the shore,
The winds rumple the even
Glimmer of the reflection.
I dash across those shallow pools:
Starring their gauzy surface:
A plopping rush of bubbles:
I turn and watch my boot-tracks
Oozing upwards slowly in the dark wind-wrinkled sand.
I am a river flowing round your hill,
Holding your image in my lingering water,
With imaged white clouds rising round your head;
And I am happy to bear your image still.
Though a loud ruffling wind may break and scatter
That happiness, I know it is not fled.
But when the wind is gone or gentled so
That only the least quivering quivers on,
Your image recomposes in my breast
With those high clouds, quiet and white as snow--
Spiritual company; and when day's gone
And those white clouds have stepped into the west;
And the dark blue filling the heavens deep
Is bright with stars that sing above your head,
Their light lies in the deep of my dark eyes
With your dark shape, a shadow of your sleep ...
When I looked into your eyes,
I saw a garden
With peonies, and tinkling pagodas.
And round-arched bridges
Over still lakes.
A woman sat beside the water
In a rain-blue, silken garment.
She reached through the water
To pluck the crimson peonies
Beneath the surface.
But as she grasped the stems,
They jarred and broke into white-green ripples
And as she drew out her hand.
The water-drops dripping from it
Stained her rain-blue dress like tears.
Coming up from my boat
In haste to lighten your anxiety,
I saw, reflected in the circular metal mirror.
The face and hands of a woman
Arranging her hair.
Being thirsty,
I filled a cup with water.
And, behold ! Fuji-yama lay upon the water
Like a dropped leaf !