human
Can you continue this poem for me?
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"Of what is she dreaming?
Of long nights lit with orange lanterns,
Of wine-cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men."
_Granted this dew-drop world be but a dew-drop world,
This granted, yet--_
Kurenai-ye or "Red Picture"
A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella
Scene from a Drama
Toyonobu. Exile's Return
Evening Bell from a Distant Temple
"Of what is she dreaming?
Of long nights lit with orange lanterns,
Of wine-cups and compliments and kisses
of the two-sword men."                       Frontispiece
"Out of the rings and the bubbles,
The curls and the swirls of the water,
Out of the crystalline shower of drops shattered in play,
Her body and her thoughts arose."
"The cranes have come back to the temple,
The winds are flapping the flags about,
Through a flute of reeds
I will blow a song."
"Then in her heart they grew,
The snows of changeless winter,
Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire."
"The green and violet peacocks
Through the golden dusk
Stately, nostalgically,
At the earliest period concerning which we have any accurate
persisted for long after his death. A disciple and priest of Zen
Buddhism himself, his work is permeated with the feeling of that
doctrine.
"To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour."
"An old pond
And the sound of a frog leaping
Into the water."
"On the mountain-road
There is no flower more beautiful
Than the wild violet."
cleverness and devitalized realism.
Force and yielding meet together:
An attack is half repulsed.
Shafts of broken sunlight dissolving
Convolutions of torpid cloud.
The boat drifts to rest
Under the outward spraying branches.
There is faint sound of quavering strings,
The reedy murmurs of a flute,
The soft sigh of the wind through silken garments;
All these are mingled
With the breeze that drifts away,
Filled with thin petals of cherry blossom,
Like tinkling laughter dancing away in sunlight.
She is an iris,
Dark purple, pale rose,
Under the gnarled boughs
That shatter their stars of bloom.
She waves delicately
With the movement of the tree.
Of what is she dreaming?
Of long nights lit with orange lanterns,
Of wine cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men.
And of dawn when weary sleepers
Lie outstretched on the mats of the palace,
And of the iris stalk that is broken in the fountain.
Autumn winds roll through the dry leaves
On her garments;
Autumn birds shiver
Athwart star-hung skies.
Under the blossoming plum-tree,
She expresses the pilgrimage
Of grey souls passing,
Athwart love's scarlet maples
To the ash-strewn summit of death.
Iris-amid-clouds
Must be her name.
Tall and lonely as the mountain-iris,
Cold and distant.
She has never known longing:
Many have died for love of her.
"And the prince came to the craggy rock
But saw only hissing waves
So he rested all day amid them."
He listens idly,
He is content with her voice.
He dreams it is the murmur
Of distant wave-caps breaking
Upon the painted screen.
The peony dancer
Swirls orange folds of dusty robes
Through the summer.
They are spotted with thunder showers,
Falling upon the crimson petals.
Heavy blooms
Breaking and spilling fiery cups
She is a fierce kitten leaping in sunlight
Towards the swaying boughs.
She is a gust of wind,
Bending in parallel curves the boughs of the willow-tree.
Gilded hummingbirds are whizzing
Through the palace garden,
Deceived by the jade petals
The wind half blows her robes,
That subside
As swaying pines.
The wind tosses hers
In circles
That recoil upon themselves:
How should I love--as the swaying or tossing wind?
_Kurenai-ye or "Red Picture"_
She glances expectantly
Through the pine avenue,
To the cherry-tree summit
Where her lover will appear.
Faint rose anticipation colours her,
And sunset;
She is a cherry-tree that has taken long to bloom.
_A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella_
Late summer changes to autumn:
Chrysanthemums are scattered
Behind the palings.
Gold and vermilion
The afternoon.
I wait here dreaming of vermilion sunsets:
In my heart is a half fear of the chill autumn rain.
_Scene from a Drama_
The daimyo and the courtesan
Compliment each other.
He invites her to walk out through the maples,
She half refuses, hiding fear in her heart.
Far in the shadow
The daimyo's attendant waits,
Nervously fingering his sword.
She is like the great rains
That fall over the earth in winter-time.
Wave on wave her heavy robes collapse
In green torrents
Lashed with slaty foam.
Downward the sun strikes amid them
And enkindles a lone flower;
A violet iris standing yet in seething pools of grey.
Gaily he offers
Packets of merchandise.
He is a harlequin of illusions,
His nimble features
Skip into smiles, like rainbows,
Cheating the villagers.
But in his heart all the while is another knowledge,
The sorrow of the bleakness of the long wet winter night.
One life is a long summer;
Tall hollyhocks stand proud upon its paths;
Little yellow waves of sunlight,
Bring scarlet butterflies.
Another life is a brief autumn,
Fierce storm-rack scrawled with lightning
Passed over it
Leaving the naked bleeding earth,
Stabbed with the swords of the rain.
He plots for he is angry,
He sneers for he is bold.
He clinches his fist
Like a twisted snake;
Coiling itself, preparing to raise its head,
Above the long grasses of the plain.
I have forgotten how many times he kissed me,
But I cannot forget
A swaying branch--a leaf that fell
To earth.
He stands irresolute
Cloaking the light of his lantern.
Tonight he will either find new love or a sword-thrust,
But his soul is troubled with ghosts of old regret.
Like vines with crimson flowers
They climb
Into his heart.
When he first came out to meet me,
He had just been girt with the two swords;
She was a dream of moons, of fluttering handkerchiefs,
Of flying leaves, of parasols,
A riddle made to break my heart;
The lightest impulse
To her was more dear than the deep-toned temple bell.
She fluttered to my sword-hilt an instant,
And then flew away;
But who will spend all day chasing a butterfly?
Swift waves hissing
Under the moonlight;
Tarnished silver.
Swaying boats
Under the moonlight,
Gold lacquered prows.
Is it a vision
Under the moonlight?
No, it is only
A beautiful geisha swaying down the street.
Out of the rings and the bubbles,
The curls and the swirls of the water,
Out of the crystalline shower of drops shattered in play,
Her body and her thoughts arose.
She dreamed of some lover
To whom she might offer her body
Fresh and cool as a flower born in the rain.
In their bark of bamboo reeds
The heavenly poetesses
Float across the sky.
Poems are falling from them
Swift as the wind that shakes the lance-like bamboo leaves;
The stars close around like bubbles
Stirred by the silver oars of poems passing.
Beware, for the dying vine can hold
The strongest oak.
Only by cutting at the root
Can love be altered.
Late in the night
A rosy glimmer yet defies the darkness.
But the evening is growing late,
The blinds are being lowered;
She who held your heart and charmed you
Is only a rosy glimmer of flame remembered.
My thoughts are sparrows passing
Through one great wave that breaks
In bubbles of gold on a black motionless rock.
Rain rattles on the pavement,
Puddles stand in the bluish stones;
Is she who holds my heart.
Alas, the torn lantern of my hope
Trembles and sputters in the rain.
I saw him pass at twilight;
He was a dark cloud travelling
Over palace roofs
With one claw drooping.
In his face were written ages
Of patient treachery
And the knowledge of his hour.
One dainty thrust, no more
Than this, he needs.
His heart is like a wind
Torn between cloud and butterfly;
Whether he will roll passively to one,
Or chase endlessly the other.
My love for her at first was like the smoke that drifts
Across the marshes
From burning woods.
But, after she had gone,
It was like the lotus that lifts up
Its heart shaped buds from the dim waters.
My heart is mournful as thunder moving
Through distant hills
Late on a long still night of autumn.
My heart is broken and mournful
As rain heard beating
Far off in the distance
While earth is parched more near.
On my heart is the black badge of exile;
I droop over it,
I accept its shame.
He only can bow to men
To those beneath him,
Who has taken sins and sorrows
And whose deathless spirit leaps
Beneath them like a golden carp in the torrent.
Through the weak spring rains
Two lovers walk together,
Holding together the parasol.
But the laughing rains of spring
Will break the weak green shoots of their love.
His will grow a towering stalk,
Hers, a cowering flower under it.
Spring rain falls through the cherry blossom,
In long blue shafts
On grasses strewn with delicate stars.
The summer rain sifts through the drooping willow,
Shatters the courtyard
Leaving grey pools.
The autumn rain drives through the maples
Scarlet threads of sorrow,
Towards the snowy earth.
Would that the rains of all the winters
Might wash away my grief!
_Toyonobu. Exile's Return_
The cranes have come back to the temple,
The winds are flapping the flags about,
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  Through a flute of reeds
I will blow a song.
Let my song sigh as the breeze through the cryptomerias,
And pause like long flags flapping,
And dart and flutter aloft, like a wind-bewildered crane.
Chrysanthemums bending
Before the wind.
Chrysanthemums wavering
In the black choked grasses.
The wind frowns at them,
He tears off a green and orange stalk of broken chrysanthemum.
The chrysanthemums spread their flattered heads,
And scurry off before the wind.
Storm-birds of autumn
With draggled wings:
Sleet-beaten, wind-tattered, snow-frozen,
Stopping in sheer weariness
Between the gnarled red pine trees
Twisted in doubt and despair;
Whence do you come, pilgrims,
Over what snow fields?
To what southern province
Hidden behind dim peaks, would you go?
"Too long were the telling
Wherefore we set out;
And where we will find rest
Only the Gods may tell."
_Part III_
Although there was no sound in all the house,
The harmonies of the robes of this gay lady
Are like chants within a temple sweeping outwards
To the morn.
But I prefer the song of the wind by a stream
Where a shy lily half hides itself in the grasses;
To the night of clouds and stars and wine and passion,
In a palace of tesselated restraint and splendor.
Sparrows and tame magpies chatter
In the porticoes
Lit with many a lantern.
There is idle song,
Scandal over full wine cups,
Sorrow does not matter.
Only beyond the still grey shoji
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
A squall has struck the sea afar off.
You can feel it quiver
Over the paper parasol
With which she shields her face;
In the drawn-together skirts of her robes,
As she turns to meet it.
Windy evening of autumn,
By the grey-green swirling river,
People are resting like still boats
Tugging uneasily at their cramped chains.
Some are moving slowly
Like the easy winds:
Brown-blue, dull-green, the villages in the distance
Sleep on the banks of the river:
The waters sullenly clash and murmur.
The chatter of the passersby,
Is dulled beneath the grey unquiet sky.
The green and violet peacocks
With golden tails
Beneath the fluttering jangling streamers
They walk
Violet and gold.
The green and violet peacocks
Through the golden dusk
Showered upon them from the vine-hung lanterns,
Stately, nostalgically,
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Leering, sneering, scowling, threatening faces;
Weeping, twisting, yelling, howling faces;
Faces fixed in a contortion between a scream and a laugh,
Meaningless faces.
I will cover the walls of night
With faces,
Till you do not know
If these faces are but masks, or you the masks for them.
Faces too grotesque for laughter,
Faces too shattered by pain for tears,
Faces of such ugliness
That the ugliness grows beauty.
They will haunt you morning, evening,
Burning, burning, ever returning.
Their own infamy creating,
Till you strike at life and hate it,
Burn your soul up so in hating.
I will scrawl on the walls of the night
Her life was like a swiftly rushing stream
Green and scarlet,
Falling into darkness.
The seasons passed for her,
Like pale iris wilting,
Or peonies flying to ribbons before the storm-gusts.
The sombre pine-tops waited until the seasons had passed.
Then in her heart they grew
The snows of changeless winter
Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire.
My thoughts are an autumn breeze
Lifting and hurrying
Dry rubbish about in a corner.
My thoughts are willow branches
Already broken
Motionless at twilight.
My beloved is like blue smoke that rises
In long slow planes,
And wavers
Over the dark paths of old gardens long neglected.
The wind shakes the mists
Making them quiver
With faint drum-tones of thunder.
Out of the crane-haunted mists of autumn,
Blue and brown
Rolls the moon.
There was a city living here long ago,
Of all that city
There is only one stone left half-buried in the marsh,
With characters upon it which no one now can read.
Despair hangs in the broken folds of my garments;
It clogs my footsteps,
Like snow in the cherry bloom.
In my heart is the sorrow
Of years like red leaves buried in snow.
Pilgrims will ascend the road in early summer,
Passing my tombstone
Mossy, long forgotten.
Girls will laugh and scatter cherry petals,
Sometimes they will rest in the twisted pine-trees' shade.
If one presses her warm lips to this tablet
The sky spreads out its poor array
Of tattered flags,
Saffron and rose
Over the weary huddle of housetops
Smoking their evening pipes in silence.
The city gleams with lights this evening
Like loud and yawning laughter from red lips.
As the fish that leaps from the river,
As the dropping of a November leaf at twilight,
As the faint flicker of lightning down the southern sky,
So I saw beauty, far away.
I dreamed I caught your loveliness
In little silver jars:
And when you died I opened them,
And there was only soot within.
Rain fell so softly, in the evening,
I almost thought it was the trees that were talking.
Cities are the toy-boxes
Time plays with:
And there are often many doll-houses
Of which the dolls are lost.
A poet's moods:
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.
Grass moves in the wind,
My soul is backwards blown.
Land, green-brown;
Sea, brown-grey;
Island, dull peacock blue;
Sky, stone-grey.
Because of the long pallid petals of white chrysanthemums
Waving to and fro,
I dare not go.
Swallows twittering at twilight:
Waves of heat
Churned to flames by the sun.
_Evening Bell from a Distant Temple_
A bell in the fog
Creeps out echoing faintly
The pale broad flashes
Of vibrating twilight,
Faded gold.
A piece of paper ready to toss in the fire,
Blackened, scrawled with fragments of an incomplete song:
My soul.
There is a goddess who walks shrouded by day:
At night she throws her blue veil over the earth.
An old courtyard
Hidden away
In the afternoon.
Grey walks,
Mossy stones,
Copper carp swimming lazily,
And beyond,
A faint toneless hissing echo of rain
That tears at my heart.
The splaying silhouette of horse-chestnut leaves
Against the tall and delicate, patrician-tinged sky
Like a princess in blue robes behind a grille of bronze.