AFTER STAYING UP LATE READING SEI SHONAGON

Rising early and setting off as the Sun rises

Behind grey-blue clouds resting on the horizon

And meeting oneself coming the other way.

Worse if only one of you is sober.

Telling a story and realizing the villain

Cannot help outsmarting the hero

And winning the heroine. Worse if it’s plain

The girl will be happier with him.

Feeling ill with no person about so that cats

Must see to  your affairs and attend

To your recovery. Worse to discover that

Mouse broth flavored with fennel is delicious.

PLANNING YOUR VACATION

The sixth day of the moon makes travelers

Love each other. It also drives away mice,

Throws people in prison and mistreats them.

The eighth day is a good time to build

Or release prisoners; be careful

To take no purgatives then. If a prisoner

And no one has released you on the eighth day

Know that the twentieth favors escapes.

ANOTHER ON BABA YAGA

When Baba Yaga appeared among the gods
Her house -- the one with the chicken legs --
Determined to improve itself. Day after day
It does deep-knee bends for hours. The owls,
Who have colonized the rafters, complain
That they’re turning into doves;

Baba Yaga lets them keep their talons
And has added phosphorescent eyes and fangs.
The mice in the straw have discovered

They can do conjuring and grant wishes;

The doves say this spoils their taste entirely.

TENANTS

Sometimes he touches a wheel and the wheel cries out
"So angry! Where was all this anger born?"
Or his foot snubs against a rock which asks
"What is it that has made you so sad?"
But mostly he does not know he is angry
Does not know he is the very father of grief.
His anger has grown so tall, his grief so clever
He cannot see them or that they've filled his house
So he  lives now in the attic, stowed away
Among cobwebs and mice and housegods.

A DREARY POEM

The day is rainy and chill and drear

Blood runs thick; the heart misgives

The hour’s gods do not hold dear

What moves and breathes or thinks it lives.

Compass needles will not point true

Or north has drifted from its post

And wanders now, just as you do.

A shadow stirs – a mouse? a ghost?

No matter; all within this place are lost

Nor star nor dream to light the way

No anodyne for soul that’s sick

Rainy and chill and drear the day

The heart misgives; the blood runs thick.