Poetry Sam

Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers. So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you. A green-shadowed trance of water Is splintered to little, white tasseled awakenings By the beat of long, black oars. So do my thoughts enter yours. Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze. So do my thoughts slowly form Over the draped mystery of you.

November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest thing on ground are the paths With morning and evening hobnails dinted, With foot and wing-tip overprinted Or separately charactered, Of little beast and little bird. The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads Make the worst going, the best the woods Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter. Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud. But of all the months when earth is greener Not one has clean skies that are cleaner. Clean and clear and sweet and cold, They shine above the earth so old, While the after-tempest cloud Sails over in silence though winds are loud, Till the full moon in the east Looks at the planet in the west And earth is silent as it is black, Yet not unhappy for its lack. Up from the dirty earth men stare: One imagines a refuge there Above the mud, in the pure bright Of the cloudless heavenly light: Another loves earth and November more dearly Because without them, he sees clearly, The sky would be nothing more to his eye Than he, in any case, is to the sky; He loves even the mud whose dyes Renounce all brightness to the skies.

Speak of the Blessed Islands men from the Ocean’s brim. Truth is hid in their endless billows and mist-wreaths dim. Tell of the T’ien-mu Mountain men in the land of Yore, Seen there, when rainbows scatter, and clouds conceal no more! Reaching up to the zenith, the skyline it seems to fill, Huge like the Sacred Mountains piled over Ch’ihch’eng Hill. T’ien-t’ai Mountain is fifty myriads of feet in height, Crushing, about to fall, soaring in awful might! Seeing, I longed to dream of Wu and the land of Yore: Flew one night on a moonbeam over the Mirror’s shore. Moon, that reflected my shadow dark on the lake below, Carried me thence to Yen-ch’i, land that the spirits know. Place where the ancient Hsieh dwelt is yet to be seen. Gibbons howl by the water dimpling so purely green. Bound on my feet the clogs were used by Hsieh of old, Mounting the dun clouds ladder, halfway up I behold Sea and Sun; and I hear mystic carols in Space. Crags and hollows commingled, hard is the road to trace. Flower-drugged, I lean on a rock. Lo! Night her shadow flings! Bears’ roars and dragons’ bellowings boom over rocks and springs! Startled, how forests quake on ridge over ridge of crags! Black are the sombre clouds, waiting the rain to pour. Placid the water still; above it the mist wraith lags. Flash! and the hollow hills blasting the lightning tore. Crash! and the stone gates burst of the vaulted sky in twain. Boundless those azure spaces; end is there none in view. Sunlight and moonbeams commingle golden and silver hue. Clad in rainbows, and mounted on coursers of rapid wind, Lords of the clouds come trooping; and trooping more behind. Tiger roar of the drums, psalteries’ oriole note. Orderly mixing disorder, crowding the genii float. Suddenly feared my soul; twanging my spirit leapt. Startled and trembling sprang I. Sorely I sighed and wept, Feeling that I was awake; that it was but a dream now past. Gone all those roseate hues the mist-wreaths had mingled last! Thus are the joys of life! for all things pass away. Streamlike flowing a-down, old Time will never stay. Now, as I bid you farewell, when will you turn again, Over the verdant mountains loosing the White Deer’s rein? Wishing to go, we ride it seeking the famous hills…. Eyes must I bow, and body bending, submit to serve Rich and powerful below, where never I may deserve Happy a thought to think, or carelessly laugh at ills?