One of the (oh, so many) good things about this blog is that it gives me an excuse the mine the myriad notebooks I’ve filled that have been collecting dust for eons – here’s some poems I originally dug about 25 years ago – the Japanese ones were translated by Kenneth Rexroth – I don’t know who did the French…

I think of the days

Before I met her

When I seemed to have

No troubles at all.

– Fujiwara No Atsutada

Others may forget you but not I.

I am haunted by your beautiful ghost.

– The Empress Yamatohime

The colored leaves

Have hidden the paths

On the autumn mountain.

How can I find my woman

Wandering on ways I do not know?

– Hitomaro

In all the world

There is no way whatever

The stag cries even

In the most remote mountain.

– Fujiwara No Tashinami

I picked this spray of heather

Autumn is dead       remember

Never more on earth we two together

Breath of time           spray of heather

Remember I wait for you

– Guillaume Appolinaire

An old terra-cotta faun

Laughs in the middle of the lawns

Auguring no doubt a bad

Ending to these serene moments

Which led me and led you,

Melancholy pilgrims,

Up to this hour which flees

In a whirl of tambourines.

– Paul Verlaine

I never knowed a successful man who could quote poetry.

— Frank McKinney Hubbard