WIND FROM THE SOUTH

In certain seasons of the year the wind
Picks up small things in Patagonia --
Mice, twigs, sins of a non-serious nature --
And rains them on Buenos Aires.
When he was young, the poet Borges
Persuaded Bioy Casares to free the wind
From the jar where the town council
Had imprisoned it by a vote of six to three.

LOOKING FOR LI PO

What is time to such as we are?

Say it is more than a thousand years

Since Li Po took a jar of wine

And went drinking one spring night

With only the moon and his shadow.

Li Po sang; his shadow danced clumsily.

They and the moon got quite drunk

Before parting.

In 1921, at harvest time

The moon went looking for Li Po

But could only find Eben Flood,

An old man, singing hoarsely

On a hill above Tilbury Town.

VERLAINE'S BROTHERS

Four miscarried brothers had Verlaine
Who dwelt, each in his own jar, in a cupboard.
"Had I but had the fortune to be born,"
Sighed the eldest, "I'd have written poems
That would have made strong men run mad
And go barking through the streets of Paris."
There was a crack in the second jar; through it
The second one's soul would slip out at night
And haunt the dreams of respectable women.
Loathe would I be to lie to you, Reader;
I have no idea what the third son did though ever
Was there something unchancy about his eyes.
Nor would I willingly betray the secrets
Which the fourth son, in his despair,
Told me all the length of a winter's night.