is it wise, or is it nothing at all?
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yoso kara wa sazo kono shima wo tsukimi kana
elsewhere, no doubt
someone's viewing this island
this moon
issa
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if you told all of your moon stories?
have you watched its flirtations?
has it laid balm to your loneliness?
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has it been prominent in your arts?
un chien andelou? moonstruck?
is it a symbol, or are you?
was it your only light?
un chien andelou? moonstruck?
is it a symbol, or are you?
was it your only light?
HUNGER MOON
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stalks the fields;
barbed wire casts a shadow.
Rising slowly,
a beam moved toward the west
stealthily changing position
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across the snow
it advances on my pillow
to wake me,
not rudely like the sun
but with the cocked gun
of silence.
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where a vain woman once slept.
The moon,
in pale buckskins, crouches
on guard beside her bed.
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the snow will melt
and all the fences thrum
in the spring breeze
but not until that sleeper, trapped
in my body, turns and turns.
Jane Cooper
from The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed.
Copyright © 2000 by Jane Cooper.
think of everyone watching
as you do tonight.
Labels: arpas, arthur hoeber, charles guilloux, David G. Lanoue, granville redmond, haiku, issa, jane cooper, jmw turner, john henry twachtman, maurice braun, pedro de lemos, poetry