Winter Night

by Po Chü-i, translated by David Hinton
The Guardian

Those I love scattered away, poor
and far too sick for friendly visits,

I'm shut up inside, no one in sight.
Lying in this village study alone,

the wick cold and lampflame dark,
wide open drapes torn and tattered,

I listen as the snow begins to fall
again, that hiss outside the window.

Older now, sleeping less and less,
I get up in the night and sit intent,

mind utterly forgotten. How else
can I get past such isolate silence?

Body visiting this world steadfast,
mind abandoned to change limitless:

it's been like this four years now,
one thousand three hundred nights.

· From The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, edited by Eliot Weinberger.

**

Elisa Gabbert

Exquisite me. Angelic me.
I never say I’m sorry for anything

(one of us thinks). I can’t remember
the present, for all the unthinkable

future reversing back into me.
Tentative. Me in suspense.

The art on the walls is hanged
at nefarious angles;

a boy at the counter disappears,
or I can see through him.

How does my x-ray vision
know when to stop? I

was trying to get to the way end.

…and the trees, and the trees, and the trees and the trees…! Whoo!
– Friends of Distinction

Gone August: blueberries and mayonnaise in the grasses—
Your thermos of Guinness. My chardonnays in the grasses.

Gone crackers and sweet cheeses. Gone melon. Molasses—
Gone mango souari nut-breathed Thursdays in the grasses.

Gone grazin'. You Boch-drunk. Clink of spoons on sunglasses—
Me, girl gone glisterlight. Whitehot malaise in the grasses

Gone soft aspen slantlight that blisters, then passes—
Gone your kisses, O my Clearing! Wildwooded ways in the grasses…

Gone lemon, pistachio. White napkin. Gone lashes—
Gone the longgone gone long game that stays for days in the grasses.

Winter lawn, one leaf whips into sky, then crashes—
I remember the tune of your tongue, praise the Grasses.

The chinchillette broods on small losses, great lapses—
Thimbleberry, going; count to tres in the grasses.

Gone a caught August's almonds. Winters that pass us—
Greet the stupefied Loneliness. Praise that Craze in the Grasses.