1.
Go, gentle bird,
I am your friend, although you doubt it.
I scorn to bribe you with my crumbs:
That would corrupt our tentative friendship.
2.
Space is a cosmic waste-basket
To which, maybe, the Maker has consigned
Abortions like the earth.
3. An Over-sensitive Man
"If I am skinned you might see
Nerve-ends like burnt mushrooms,
Calloused, each one a poem.
I cannot feel any more".
4. The Taoist
A man in search of Tao
Saw this dilemma:
"If I would have Tao,
I should not seek Tao.
If to have Tao,
I don't seek Tao,
I shan't have Tao."
5.
I will meet you half-way, said my eyes.
Yours said nothing.
6.
What is the world going to do
To stop me in my trance,
Where the world is whirled in a jig
And I am not involved?
7.
The frankly grey and the frankly bald
Half-pity those who dye their hair or hairs
Or cover their shiny tops with wigs.
8.
The Etiquette of Words defeats me.
Art is a distortion of between-spaces
Wherein we live. The modern poet tries
To locate the bearings of those between-spaces, but
To define is to desecrate;
Leaf shadows flicker on the sunlit road ahead.
- - - - (1966-80)
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem