They’ll be free from the gramophone’s pain,its torture from the rub and the needles.Chaste, they’ll not know the sinof singing a capella while hungrycaught between the farce and the…

Mom and I are alone once againthe same as it was at the end of the forties.Alone, in a house that’s not our own,we tell each other last night’s dreams(in hers two old people are always cryingin…

The one that’s out there in the street, out there in the country,the rough and vehement tyranny,that governs my life as a citizenthat one will passbecause it punishes my body,but does not have neither…

Why do I have to die / not in my homeland

To think it's the right moment now to talk to me in tears, / to go barefoot there, so you be told what's in store for us:

That is why / Flowers seek it in the stars,

Who brought me here? Why am I being locked up?

many fireflies / could have shone in your eyes

My little boy pulls my coat as if he's asking "Why did you take so long to get back home? who were you fighting with all those months and years just to win that prize of snow-white hair?"…

To kiss the lips is to drink water. / I kiss your lips.

Too much love / somehow became / no love at all

Chemical. / Fire grass. / Retching.

Good man, my friend Mynheer . . . / Banished one day far from home

And the redeeming hour in which the poem writhes; / and the young desert in the still glowing cinders;

At times reality catches me in the middle of the act / and stuffs down my throat its five-cornered red stars.

I could have been your refuge. I could have killed you. Yes you-

You are forbidden to me. I love you but my flesh turns black upon me / a block of coal pure useless alive

If only I knew how to lose my shadow on time / if only I knew how to point myself out with my finger,

The violence / the guilt with which I love you thus derive from that distance

I saw a ghost pass in the mirrorSomeone whispered something in my earI said a word, and left.Graves scattered with the mandrake seeds.A bleating sound entered the assembly.Gardens remained hanging.Straw…

Ascetic he emerges from its belly to the grave. His days are not entered on the calendar and he does not gather the things that are scattered. Earthquakes do not shake him nor wink at death without him.…

I thank everyone I don't love.

The learners split into equal parties / Forbidding, permitting, and deriving.

Cry of pain exalted sings / I am on fire, and in terror: frost

and the land was left barren

We had just met. / I had not discovered the beauty / of the skies

The Jew is loneliness.

Will nothing of my earthly fame endure?Not even flowers, not even songs!What can my heart do?In vain we have sprung forth,we have come to be on earth.Let us enjoy ourselves, my friends,let us embrace…

Your shadow falls on those who must live on earth.

Buried inside us were the sounds / of the songs we heard in the cradle

However many times I now set out / on the road of return

He who always knowsto which god he prays,will never be heard.

Buddha, Christ,in vain you are hidingin so many incarnations.

Everything was fulfilled,I was spared nothing.Who will forgive me.

Fear Godwho doesn’t existin your heart.

This yearI bore no fruitonly leavesthat give no shadeI’m afraid, Rabbi,I’m afraid, Lord,that a hungryweary man curses meon the endless roadto Jerusalem

nothing, God

. . .Mute,my head covered,I stand with a pebble on my lipsin front of a wall of fireand oblivioncountedamong the helpersof death. . .Take the ash from me,take the weight from me it’s notmy fault,…

Save me, shield me, faithful journey,from my own lies and from our era.Protect me, you, Angel and Guardian,but you, White Cloud, guide me.Keep me from thunder, hurricane,immaculate truth, give me light.Don’t…

she flew up, flustered, hovering, / circling round her lover. 

If He kills me still I will trust in Him.

Autumn rains darken azure-deep skies.

Dharma companions filling mountains, / a sangha forms of itself: chanting, sitting

When you came on twisted rocky paths, / who welcomed you at my mountain gate?

Returning you to StoneTower Mountain, we bid farewell

In night quiet, spring mountains stand

Crystalline waters quiet settling night. / Moonlight leaving idleness everywhere

Frail water-chestnut vines never settle, / and light cottonwood blossoms fly easily.

In these twilight years, I love tranquility / alone.

I was here. But not only here, my lord

I don't know / nor want to know her name, and maybe that's / the reason I can't breathe,

Now, if I look for old masters here, / I find empty rivers and mountains.

To Bod Iwan a fair wind came / through the winter leaves aflame,

the smell of a language, a country song, / an oath on a stone, a cry

Smooth, dark slabs; floor to roof boxed / with stone shelfs like doorless cupboards.

From the airplane, streaks of light pick out / a little town, plumped down there by chance:

Birth's struggle done, the midwife sets off home / down Neegirt's fields, with lit peat held for light.

The Emperor Constantine / battling with a traitor / three hundred years later

And all the pointless fights that come / from thinking we can only see one way,

When he touches the strings / that tied them together the first time