Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild.

(All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday afternoon in the hills with their lovers.)

Chinese Letters or Korean

From a Window

One time the moon whitened the fields, whitened the

pastures, polished the floor for the dancers;

Let the dancers foot it, earth, legs to the moon,

Look up at the face of the moon and laugh with their

laughter—

Silver mist, yellow mist, grey mist of dawn,

Eyes open, eyes closing, tell me, did they once lose

a beat in the measures?—

And let a long brown horse nose to the ground go eating

tufts of moonshine, go walking from tree

to proud tree in the ballroom.

* * *

The moon laughs at these streets.

The tongues of sea mist creep and lick and wind

And say to the trillion lights

A wet night leaves your city—

* * *

Those who look from a ten story window

Cannot look up at the moon and laugh—

They look out through a lane between bricks over ships,

Widening into a pasture of stars

above Long Island.

They cannot look up at the moon and laugh.

Their eyes meet the gaze of the moon and catch her high laughter.

“Yes with my gold paint brush I am painting your hotel sky

Immemorial blue, lapis lazuli sky.

But you, though you try and try

May not even touch with your fingers the blue of my sky—

Looking in at your window of bricks

I laugh and laugh again

Hearing you cry.”

Painted Fishes

Green fishes on a red-lacquered tray

Are worn bringing a sea of beer

From draught-faucets to oak tables.

Between bartenders and customers

They are losing their green fins.

These Valleys Seem Old

(Dedicated to Mrs. Florence Ayscough who lives near Shanghai and whose translations from inscriptions on Chinese paintings furnished the basis for these renditions into modem American speech.)

1

The first frost comes now and turns the river water still and clear.

The sky is without a moon. Many stars show.

It is in the valleys near us the watch dogs are barking.

Across the water student lamplights shine.

My forehead bums and then a cold shakes me.

The chills go through my bones. I can hardly stand it.

Thoughts go back and forth about years now gone.

Let us keep off the fishing boats as we go home.

2

In the short grass valleys I lived with hard luck.

I was lonesome and it was no use to talk about it.

Now my wife nags at me to help her with the bamboo shoots for winter eating.

My boy is sick; none of his vegetables grow well this year

About all I will have to live on is mouldy rice.

And dirty wine bought with promises will be about all for drink.

More and more bills are left at my door by tax collectors.

I lean heavy and slow on a stick and go tired to the house of my neighbor hoping he will have a little money for me.