Crosslegged rest on the dirt eye cockt to smoke—

The hands you layed on clay

Kickwheeld, curling,

creamd to the lip of nothing,

And coaxt to a white dancing heat that day

Will linger centuries in these towns and loams

And speak to men or beasts

When Japanese and English

Are dead tongues.

WORK TO DO TOWARD TOWN

Venus glows in the east,

mars hangs in the twins.

Frost on the logs and bare ground

free of house or tree.

Kites come down from the mountains

And glide quavering over the rooftops;

frost melts in the sun.

A low haze hangs on the houses

—firewood smoke and mist—

Slanting far to the Kamo river

and the distant Uji hills.

Farmwomen lead down carts

loaded with long white radish;

I pack my bike with books—

all roads descend toward town.

NANSEN

I found you on a rainy morning

After a typhoon

In a bamboo grove at Daitoku-ji.

Tiny wet rag with a

Huge voice, you crawled under the fence

To my hand. Left to die.

I carried you home in my raincoat.

“Nansen, cheese!” you’d shout an answer

And come running.

But you never got big,

Bandy-legged bright little dwarf—

Sometimes not eating, often coughing

Mewing bitterly at inner twinge.

Now, thin and older, you won’t eat

But milk and cheese. Sitting on a pole

In the sun. Hardy with resigned

Discontent.

You just weren’t made right. I saved you,

And your three-year life has been full

Of mild, steady pain.

SIX YEARS

January

the pine tree is perfect

Walking in the snowhills the trail goes just right

Eat snow off pine needles

the city’s not so big, the

hills surround it.

Hieizan wrapped in his own cloud—

Back there no big houses, only a little farm shack

crows cawing back and forth

over the valley of grass-bamboo

and small pine.

If I had a peaceful heart it would look like this.

the train down in the city

was once a snowy hill

February

water taps running, the sun part out

cleaning house       sweeping floor

knocking cobwebs off the shoji       pap pap

wiping the wood and the mats with a wet rag

hands and knees on the veranda

cat-prints—make them a footwiper

of newspaper

wash the motorcycle.        fold clothes

start a new fire under the kama.

fill Mrs. Hosaka’s kerosene stove tank,

get the cat hairs

out of the kotatsu.

take the sheets in from the bamboo poles

where they’re drying

put away the poles

stand them up below the eaves and

tie them with strings.

scrub out the floor of the bath and move the

mirror

and towel rack

sweep out the genkan footprints

oil the clutch cable of the motorcycle

through the oil nipple under the handle grip

—take off sweater now because it’s

too hot

put back on the denim jacket       work

Nansen mews angrily because he feels so sick

all the different animals are persons