After Collecting the Autumn Taxes

by: Bai Juyi (772-846)
translated by Arthur Waley

From my high castle I look at the town below
Where the natives of Pa cluster like a swarm of flies.
How can I govern these people and lead them aright?
I cannot even understand what they say.
But at least I am glad, now that the taxes are in,
To learn that in my province there is no discontent.
I fear its prosperity is not due to me
And was only caused by the year's abundant crops,
The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few;
My house by the moat is leisurely and still.
In the autumn rain the berries fall from the eaves;
At the evening bell the birds return to the wood.
A broken sunlight quavers over the southern porch

The Primer

by Christina Davis

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.


(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).


In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

The Awakening

by Rumi

In the early dawn of happiness
you gave me three kisses
so that I would wake up
to this moment of love

I tried to remember in my heart
what I’d dreamt about
during the night
before I became aware
of this moving
of life

I found my dreams
but the moon took me away
It lifted me up to the firmament
and suspended me there
I saw how my heart had fallen
on your path
singing a song

Between my love and my heart
things were happening which
slowly slowly
made me recall everything

You amuse me with your touch
although I can’t see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness
although I haven’t seen your lips
You are hidden from me.

But it is you who keeps me alive

Perhaps the time will come
when you will tire of kisses
I shall be happy
even for insults from you
I only ask that you
keep some attention on me.

Last Night

by Rumi

Last night you left me and slept
your own deep sleep. Tonight you turn
and turn. I say,
"You and I will be together
till the universe dissolves."
You mumble back things you thought of
when you were drunk.

Out of the Arms

by Charles Bukowski

out of the arm of one love
and into the arms of another

I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes pot
writes songs and stories
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the sex is just as good or better.

it isn't pleasant to be put on the cross and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn't
work
as all love
finally
doesn't work ...

it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking

listening to the waves ...

I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
wating for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound ...
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs ...

out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another

it's not pleasant to die on the cross,
it is much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in
the dark.

A Love Poem

by Garrison Keillor

A summer night, and you, and paradise,
So lovely and so full of grace,
Above your head, the universe has hung its lights,
And I reach out my hand to touch your face.

I believe in impulse, in all that is green,
Believe in the foolish vision that comes true,
Believe that all that is essential is unseen,
And for this lifetime I believe in you.

All of the lovers and the love they made:
Nothing that was between them was a mistake.
All that is done for love's sake,
Is not wasted and will never fade.

All who have loved will be forever young
and walk in grandeur on a summer night
along the avenue.
They live in every song that is sung
and every painting of pure light
and every Pas De Deux.

O love that shines from every star,
Love reflected in the silver moon;
It is not here, but it's not far.
Not yet, but it will be here soon.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

The Silver Swan

by Ben Jonson

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last,
And sung no more;
Farewell, all joys;
O,death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live,
More fools than wise.

The Dance

by William Carlos Williams

In Breughel’s great picture,
The Kermess,
The dancers go round,
They go round and around,
The squeal and the blare and the tweekle of bagpipes,
A bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies
(round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them.
Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds,
Swinging their butts,
Those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures
Prance as they dance,
In Breughel’s great picture, the Kermess.

Do I Love You

by Jack Larson

Do I love you more than the air?
Air used to seem just nothingness.
Through our love,
Now it seems no less than God’s air airing your life’s breath;
Too rich for space, too dear for death.
Through you.
And I love you more than the air.

To a Terrorist

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness is another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

The Dawn

I realize that the dawn
when we'll meet again
will never break,

so I give it up,
little by little, this love.

But something in me laughs
as I say this, someone

shaking his head and chuckling
softly, Hardly, hardly

--Rumi a la coleman barks...

When a Madman Smiles at You

by Rumi

Galen, the great physician,asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.
"Master, that medicine
is for crazy people! You're far from needing that!"

Galen: "Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down and touched my sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

It's only in the grave that unlike beings associate.
A wise man once remarked, "I saw a crow and a stork
flying together, and I couldn't understand it,
until I investigated and found what they shared.
They were both lame."

There's a reason why the beetle
leaves the rose garden. He can't stand
all that loveliness.

He wants to live in rotten dung,
not with nightingales and flowers.
Watch who avoids you.
That, too, reveals your inner qualities.

The mark of eternity in Adam was not only
that the angels bowed to him,
but that Satan wouldn't.