PAGE 6
Stray Birds
by
182
I am like the road in the night listening to the footfalls of its memories in silence.
183
The evening sky to me is like a window, and a lighted lamp, and a waiting behind it.
184
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
185
I am the autumn cloud, empty of rain, see my fulness in the field of ripened rice.
186
They hated and killed and men praised them.
But God in shame hastens to hide its memory under the green grass.
187
Toes are the fingers that have forsaken their past.
188
Darkness travels towards light, but blindness towards death.
189
The pet dog suspects the universe for scheming to take its place.
190
Sit still my heart, do not raise your dust.
Let the world find its way to you.
191
The bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth–“Your freedom is mine.”
192
Woman, in your laughter you have the music of the fountain of life.
193
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
194
God loves man’s lamp lights better than his own great stars.
195
This world is the world of wild storms kept tame with the music of beauty.
196
“My heart is like the golden casket of thy kiss,” said the sunset cloud to the sun.
197
By touching you may kill, by keeping away you may possess.
198
The cricket’s chirp and the patter of rain come to me through the dark, like the rustle of dreams from my past youth.
199
“I have lost my dewdrop,” cries the flower to the morning sky that has lost all its stars.
200
The burning log bursts in flame and cries,–“This is my flower, my death.”
201
The wasp thinks that the honey-hive of the neighbouring bees is too small.
His neighbours ask him to build one still smaller.
202
“I cannot keep your waves,” says the bank to the river.
“Let me keep your footprints in my heart.”
203
The day, with the noise of this little earth, drowns the silence of all worlds.
204
The song feels the infinite in the air, the picture in the earth, the poem in the air and the earth;
For its words have meaning that walks and music that soars.
205
When the sun goes down to the West, the East of his morning
stands before him in silence.
206
Let me not put myself wrongly to my world and set it against me.
207
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
208
Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.
209
Maiden, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.
210
The best does not come alone. It comes with the company of the all.
211
God’s right hand is gentle, but terrible is his left hand.
212
My evening came among the alien trees and spoke in a language which my morning stars did not know.
213
Night’s darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.
214
Our desire lends the colours of the rainbow to the mere mists and vapours of life.
215
God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.
216
My sad thoughts tease me asking me their own names.
217
The service of the fruit is precious, the service of the flower
is sweet, but let my service be the service of the leaves in its
shade of humble devotion.
218
My heart has spread its sails to the idle winds for the shadowy island of Anywhere.
219
Men are cruel, but Man is kind.