The Heavenly Poetesses

In their bark of bamboo reeds
The heavenly poetesses
Float across the sky.

Poems are falling from them
Swift as the wind that shakes the lance-like bamboo leaves;
The stars close around like bubbles
Stirred by the silver oars of poems passing.


The Old Love and the New

Beware, for the dying vine can hold
The strongest oak.

Only by cutting at the root
Can love be altered.

Late in the night
A rosy glimmer yet defies the darkness.

But the evening is growing late,
The blinds are being lowered;
She who held your heart and charmed you
Is only a rosy glimmer of flame remembered.