It turns out that Jack (whom we're all glad to see blogging again) has also been looking at poetry lately, so I thought I'd see her Yeats and raise her some nice Asian stuff I ran across today. With a few exceptions, I feel that poems really can't be too short*, and the Japanese have had the good taste to realize this as well. Here are some highlight entries from a local poetry contest in the 16th Century, all of which depict rustic occupations, and are (per the rules of the contest, and isn't it nice to see some poetry which follows some rules?) united by the theme of flowers. My book doesn't say which poem won.

Soon the temple tree's
Branches will be stripped away;
Its bark will be slashed.
Enjoy the tree's aroma;
Its scent of temple incense.

In the sky at night
Stars known as "the rice basket,"
Blossom like flowers.
All day I make rice baskets;
At night I view these flowers.

When the spring arrives
And I sit outside, working,
I am never bored.
With a chisel in my hand
I can raise flowers from stones.

The dust of our saw
Has the frangrance of flowers
In a mountain breeze.
The breeze strews our sawdust blooms
From the sharp teeth of the saw.

I really like the way the poems capture the feeling of doing physical work on a nice day in the mountains: very like some of my better work days lately.

And here's Li Po, the cheery, contemplative, drunken old crank, with a humourously macabre variation on his favourite theme, elegizing a deceased wine salesman:

Old Lao, down below in the Yellow Springs,
Must still be brewing his "Great Spring" vintage.
But without Li Po in that Terrace of Night,
To whom can he be selling his wine?

I think I'll pour myself a glass of port and call this post done.

*Speaking of short poems, I can't resist quoting another of my all-time favourites. A typically intriguing Sappho fragment, the original Ionic can well be appreciated even by those untutored in that bubbling tongue:

méte moi meli méte melissa
for me neither honey nor bee