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

the blackberries are nowhere as sweet / as the snow we had last year.

You are fresh words / on the old stone of time.

she'll turn your dreams to Scotch mist, / bone comb your hair with tugging wind / scrub your faces with rain.

I’d like to make picturesinstead of poems.That wayeach one would have its taleof sales and robberiesof rooms where it had hungof women and dear friendswho got it as a gift.They would have to be…

In a certain region of China,in the southwest, not far from the mountains of Yunnan,a kind of apple is to be foundwith such an exquisite flavorthat in ancient times the emperors would spendtheir gold…

there is no stone where the hawk soars, / no hawk where the stones stand

The loch knows its deeper stretches / where danger lurks;

Before long your poem songs got you known, / to Edinburgh city next you were gone.

In this poem, two of the region’s hills speak to each other. When a vehicle was needed for telling the story of Foot and Mouth, the hills seemed appropriate; they are very ancient, stand above the…

Two Romany boys were sent, / sent across the great sea.

The pond of your breastsMy pillow shall be;Your eyes my moonsLike silver shine.Wait, my girl!Don’t go away:What if I will not see you,Ever again?

Cast your nets overseas / and land on your / shadow.

I lift’t the harnesh fae ahint the oul doar, whur it haes hug     fae iver I mine,The cullar an’ hames maybe ouler than me, an’ a bit o’ a     ravell’t…

That fire ball, with wide open eyes / is hanging above our heads, burning hot

Sitting alone       within a hidden bamboogrove    plucking the qin   repeating longhowls        in a deep forest no one knowsbright moon …

A strong desire to climb high          No onecomes to offer wine            So forlorn fordistant             …

At last at West Lake         it’s the sixth moon-monthWind  light      sights    unlike     any four seasonsSky-linked lotus…

Spring / wind through the threshold

Paper screen         Rock pillow        Square bamboo bedHand tires book drops             Long   afternoon dreamsWoke…

Don’t resent your exile                       Long agoI passed thru Min              There are usually…

Eighth moon-month Dongting autumn                     XiaoXiang waters flow north                   …

Fragrant night shrine incense                          Forgotto go home                  Pine…

then you go on dying dying in plasterthen the pitch-black snow inside the womb goes on fallingthen the face is not while burning pain on the face iswound is not while the ripe age preserved by beheading…

what wraps two dripping fruit segments wraps a present too / since solitude became your food

Happened upon a pine forest       Rockbeneath       perfect pillow for sleepNo calendar sun       within mountainscold ends     …

I draw the curtains and sleep / I wake inside the room

like a scream expanding its territory until tonight

Withered grass on all sides / Parched but still alive

No one seen. In empty mountains, / hints of drifting voice, no more.

he had counterrevolutionary thoughts had been hiding / in our army said his old comrades / whom I'd been calling uncles

The schoolchildren fill their backpacks / with tiny bombs.

Take a deep breath of the profoundly ambiguous logic we believe in.

I believe too little that I see? Or perhaps this / is simply the thirst

this train / will not leave / my memory

Salty sweat floods its eyes / and mine. The lark is already there,

Take it easy, that's my body / on its back

Grave Brahms and elegiac Schubert, / a few songs, Chopin's third sonata

EULOGISTIC Most holy grave of Oshakan,Soil of intellect today, from whenceAn illustrious history of fifteen stormy centuries,From East to West–two Armenias entire,Moves freely, praying, toward…

God, what a down-at-heel hope / for a voiceless evaporation

Go on, admit it: / yesterday you also existed here,

It is one moonless evening.

it's time for a walk once again / along the brink of the beach, where all / of a sudden the woods held back

It was too late / to unbait my hook.

I might as well go to sea: /to let oneself be blown away.

Hardly had I known them. / I also hardly stayed behind.

As simple as a drop of water, / as clear as a splinter of birch,

Irreversible is the riveron whose backdead leaves swirl.Irreversible are words—the dust of roadsmingled with breath, warm breaththat sticks to our trembling lipslike fog to a boat.Irreversible is this…

You and Iliving on an islandfar from cities with traffic lights and people.Outside we hear the rustlingsof a bed of reedswhere the wind with its toothless mouth blowsluring in tides.A boat is moored on…

Large, gray, sprawledlike an old elephant.Winter is ending.Low, sloping roofs are overturned boatsslumbering along the shores of drowsiness.Twenty years of an oak tree’s lifeis burned instantly…

He comes to me every day with a cruel bounce in his stepwith eyes darting like little green flames—the town postman in a heavy, damp coatjovially announcing he has nothing for me.I see his blue uniform…

Without failSundays at the cinemawere always rainy daysbig black umbrellasclashing against the ticket booth.The doorman among the torn stubslooked like a watercolorhung crookedly on a kitchen wall.We…

It’s not time for a change.As long as I can rememberit’s never been time for a change.Like cars that screech to a halthouses standpoised in their old breeding groundof rotten acacia leaves.From…

1Here I am you aloneIn this mad, gapingHellHere I am you alone and death altogetherWith its predators and its seers and the informersPerhaps I am arriving atThe limit of my possibilitiesFor you to arrive…

Radio signals float just out of earshot. / A boat with its eel fishers / in luminous raincoats skims by.