Thirty-Three
Again we missed
bloom on the cherry.
What season
for us now
is not swift?
Poems on the topic: time
Poems on the topic “time” on Poets.by.
Twenty-Four
I followed him
to the red
mountain slope,
there to accept
what only time
could give.
Ninety-Eight
When did she
become, and so
suddenly,
this woman, talking
of young men?
84 Fujiwara no Kiyosuke Ason
If I long should live,
Then may present days
Be dear to me —
Just as past times, though filled with grief,
Gently return to mind.
Sun Spends the Day
Sun spends the day
drawing me
in shadow-wash
revising
erasing
Bread and Bus: An Essay
Somebody is always,
always baking bread. It’s
been that way for thousands,
thousands of years.
Additionally, if life
is short, then there is
no such thing as
a long bus ride.
In conclusion, the bus
rolled onto a street
of shops, and we smelled
bread, baking; baking bread.
September 8, 1980
Question: what is a silhouette, but an illusion
taken at a slow tempo. How palpable it feels
when time—an empty vessel—no longer fills itself.
You question that silhouette. You speak
at a slow tempo. You ask how urgently and gently are
synonyms. Their music is as familiar as
your own shadow. Ask: is there a word for this
slow tempo.
The Coming of Wisdom with Time
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
Challenge
I said, in drunken pride of youth and you
That mischief-making Time would never dare
Play his ill-humoured tricks upon us two,
Strange and defiant lovers that we were.
I said that even Death, Highwayman Death,
Could never master lovers such as we,
That even when his clutch had throttled breath,
My hymns would float in praise, undauntedly.
I did not think such words were bravado.
Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear,
Of Time or Death. We loved each other so.
And thus, with you believing me, I made
My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid....
And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear?
Transience
Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,
Dawn will not veil her splendour for your grief.
Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty
To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.
Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble.
Time will not pause or tarry on his way ;
To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter.
Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.
Nay, do not weep ; new hopes, new dreams, new faces,
The unspent joy of all the unborn years.
Will prove your heart a traitor to its sorrow.
And make your eyes unfaithful to their tears.
Ruins of Paestum
On lowlands where the temples lie
The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,
Only the little songs of birds
Link the unbroken hours.
So in the end, above my heart
Once like the city wild and gay,
The slow white stars will pass by night,
The swift brown birds by day.
Bells
At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,
The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel--
Why am I suddenly so cold?
Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.
Bells in Venice, bells at sea,
Bells in the valley heavy and slow--
There is no place over the crowded world
Where I can forget that the days go.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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