The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness, Circled three times above the upturned faces With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings, And then returned to stagger on her finger....
It is moonlight. Alone in the silence I ascend my stairs once more, While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight, Crash on a white sand shore. It is moonlight. The garden is silent....
How is it that I am now so softly awakened, My leaves shaken down with music? Darling, I love you. It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before, Though your mouth is more alive than roses,...
The girl in the room beneath Before going to bed Strums on a mandolin The three simple tunes she knows. How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! When she has finished them several times...
I stood for a long while before the shop window Looking at the blue butterflies embroidered on tawny silk. The building was a tower before me, Time was loud behind me,...
The first bell is silver, And breathing darkness I think only of the long scythe of time. The second bell is crimson, And I think of a holiday night, with rockets...
On the day when my uncle and I drove to the cemetery, Rain rattled on the roof of the carriage; And talkng constrainedly of this and that We refrained from looking at the child's coffin on the seat before us....
When I was a boy, and saw bright rows of icicles In many lengths along a wall I was dissappointed to find That I could not play music upon them: I ran my hand lightly across them...
It is now two hours since I left you, And the perfume of your hands is still on my hands. And though since then I have looked at the stars, walked in the cold blue streets,...
The day opens with the brown light of snowfall And past the window snowflakes fall and fall. I sit in my chair all day and work and work Measuring words against each other. I open the piano and play a tune...
Many things perplex me and leave me troubled, Many things are locked away in the white book of stars Never to be opened by me. The starr'd leaves are silently turned, And the mooned leaves;...
This girl gave her heart to me, And this, and this. This one looked at me as if she loved me, And silently walked away. This one I saw once and loved, and never saw her again....
It is night time, and cold, and snow is falling, And no wind grieves the walls. In the small world of light around the arc-lamp A swarm of snowflakes falls and falls....
As I walked through the lamplit gardens, On the thin white crust of snow, So intensely was I thinking of my misfortune, So clearly were my eyes fixed On the face of this grief which has come to me,...
How many times have we been interrupted Just as I was about to make up a story for you! One time it was because we suddenly saw a firefly Lighting his green lantern among the boughs of a fir-tree....
My heart is an old house, and in that forlorn old house, In the very centre, dark and forgotten, Is a locked room where an enchanted princess Lies sleeping. But sometimes, in that dark house,...
Like an old tree uprooted by the wind And flung down cruelly With roots bared to the sun and stars And limp leaves brought to earth Torn from its house So do I seem to myself When you have left me.
The music of the morning is red and warm; Snow lies against the walls; And on the sloping roof in the yellow sunlight Pigeons huddle against the wind. The music of evening is attenuated and thin...
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do....
Moonlight silvers the tops of trees, Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall And through the evening fall, Clearly, as if through enchanted seas, Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,...