Poetry

  I look upon how much people suffer Wishing Bian Que and Hua Tuo* were now here Predestiny links us now and forever To fulfill my wish: a medical career   *Bian Que and Hua Tuo: Ancient Chinese medical masters. 悬壶了愿 人间疾苦何多 扁鹊华佗难現 亘古缘牵末劫 悬壶济世了愿 Dr. Rong was born into...

Whether if my promise be known or not, Of which I spoke when lying on this spot, The weeds have covered up my trail; Their stalks show not the seat that I once made, But mounds still show the meadows where they fade, And here I sat: it is no...

Those Catskill Mountain Climbs I've walked from Ayers rock to Sydney I've seen all those majestic sites I've beheld the peaks of Mt. McKinley And of Everest in all its might I’ve seen the meandering Nile I’ve walked the great Silk Road I’ve beheld the beautiful Fiji Isle And the...

I Think Therefore “I think,” said Descartes, “and therefore I am.” declared many years ago, way before spam. It predated facebook and twitter and tweet, when only the lonely thought thought was a treat. Today there is seldom an unspoken thought; a trait to forsake for the misery it’s brought....

A Sonnet Saluting Lady Snow Snow is a rainfall in frozen repose; Rainbow rich in hues, delicate its shape After lightning strikes; its thunder echoes. There is still tension in each crystal flake. Snow rings down, a chintzy, folding curtain, On worlds still steeped in a dark translucence. It makes...

A godly painting held over their heads As they process through a street in Florence, Each face is free from manic glee or dread And transcends with a tranquil tolerance; They are transformed by the art’s deep meaning, The ideals that they uphold in their lives Of what is proper...

“He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"/In the old sense. Wrong from the start  …” –Ezra Pound, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” “Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint.” –Also Ezra Pound An immigrant Jew, an old woman, her tattoo peeking from under a billowed sleeve,...

I Pray It’s Not Too Late I’ve walked in the eye of a hurricane Safe between its walls of rain And when the winds swept in again I stood alone in awe I’ve beheld forever in the sea Her gentle waves that called to me The world beneath so wild...

Where lightness finds the passage through the dark the thoroughfare of dimness, where we’ll soar about the sun undone, unborn again, but one─divine the spark! The wicket door unfastens where the constellations form sepulchers made of stars. Celestial reach─ become what’s yet to be, your elegy of memoirs left beneath...

—a sonnet of differing with Keats Behold this naked truth, and say not Beauty: a body splayed, nailed cruelly to a tree, spit upon, a jeering crowd, a crown of thorns—blood stains and pain, not artistry. Beauty may hold but cannot be this truth of suffering, the mortal cross. Golgotha!...

Wake to this dawn like no day before you. Rise to this morning like no other morn. Night is now past and life can’t ignore you. Feel in the sunrise your future be born. Seek every trail the new light may show you. Open your mind to each challenging thought....

Clouds skip away from the full shine of the full moon The palace is lit up The maestro lifts his stick Majesty begins The richness of kings at least in human terms How quick things are Violins gone from the ballroom Metal heartstrings crushed at the crowded dance floor bar...

April 2013 The snow has thawed; it's Spring again Crickets sing to the beat of rain The sky is dark, the air is warm Again, the bugs begin to swarm Although the world is wet and dark We welcome back the springtime lark The rain beats down, replace the snow...

Faery Dust Anarchy With winds awhistling through the trees and air sprites dancing on the breeze, you'll hear the pipes from Éirinn’s lands - mayhap a leprechaun might sneeze at swirling faery dust - like bees that swarm in clouds of floating strands. Minutest drops of molten gold soon fill the air...

The Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion is the most famous Chinese calligraphy work of Wang Xizhi, composed in the year 353. Exhibiting an extremely high artistic value, this work is known as one of the three running script calligraphy masterpieces.Wang Xizhi (303-361) was a Chinese calligrapher,...

From Dante, to Beatrice In your father’s garden we first met, a pair in exile, two children playing without a care, in our shared exile. You were eight, I, nine, you in crimson and I blind to all else but the fall of your fair hair, from my exile. For...

He's placed dramatically center stage by Benjamin West—Benjamin Franklin. His gray hair flies. He's getting on in age. Electricity coming from lightning! He's dressed in dark clothes with a white tied tie. His brow is furrowed and his face is lit. His red cape sweeps up into windy sky. A...

(Minghui.org) Ms. Fu Ying, a Falun Gong practitioner and gifted poet from Liaoning Province, was recently illegally arrested by police in Shenyang City. This arrest comes just two years after her nine-year incarceration in the Liaoning Women's Prison. Ms. Fu Ying's crime? Her steadfast faith in Falun Gong. Ms. Fu...

One night-crawler out on this sparkling court, Dried-up and shriveled, overdone, not red, Neglected to take heed, or to report ‘T was all mirage; to turn around instead. Followers, these, in the benighted hours, Had wriggled out to nab a bit of wet; Who in the sun wilt faster than...

Click here for more riddles I. My mirror image never is that far, I have five different points just like a star, While I’ve no mouth or tongue that I employ, I make a sound quite loud when struck with joy. Have a try, Who am I? II. I’m an...

They aren’t mine, these flabby folds of flesh. I have no clue why they have chosen me As target of their sordid misery, Transforming me from sylph to plodding wretch. I’ve never seen this abdomen before. I never have claimed kinship with such thighs. They may expect a welcome, by...

The lake cradles symmetries of spring trees. The sky scries the membrane of wide waters: unseen breezes, like me, are passers-by somehow touching the lake, trees, reeds, clouds, sky. My eyes focus on these without shutters, curved lenses, flat prisms, mirrored degrees, or a cam’ra. Time is ev’rywhere. Chances come and go....

The urge for civility in war is noble and worthy. In an epic poem written over 2,500 years ago, even Homer recounts a Trojan War where the two warring armies stop to allow each other to claim their dead. Leaving them out in the open would be a moral travesty....

The End of the Party The blood-red dragon struggles To keep China locked, To keep the whole world huddled, ‘Cow’-towed, awed, and shocked. To consolidate its power, It whisks slight of hand, Throws up magicians’ trophies And juggles demand. A past, butchered history And vast cheques, not signed, Are joined...

On "Kaaterskill Creek" by Erik Koeppel for the memory of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The site is downstream from the Kaaterskill Falls— where it is so shady, and certainly wet. When listening closely one hears nature's calls; that beautiful atmosphere's hard to forget. On Kaaterskill Creek you may find in the...

In Niagara by Frederick Edwin Church, immediately one’s taken in to the great falls. From a remarkably precarious perch, one’s seized by the enormity of the landscape. One sees at once the powerful and driving force of the water rushing forth to accelerate downward and over the inevitable course one...

“Granma died, my ex tried suicide,” you confide in me, your credabil- ity nil for one more dark excuse is no use. Let’s settle our bill til there’s no more last, last straw.   Damian Robin is a journalist and poet living in England. Featured Image by Vaclav Zapadlik

(The Epoch Times)—The Chinese photojournalist Du Bin, who was released in July after a month’s detention by police, has published online a book he wrote years ago detailing torture in China. It consists of poems, a painting, onomatopoeic designs, and descriptions of brutal torture. The title of the book is...

Young knucklehead: Today you’ll bruise your thumb To harden you to pains to come; The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set. When you are good for more than sweeping floors, In five or six years—maybe more— Then you may...

Goddess sleek and draped in white, Flowing wisps of long brown hair, Halo hat of holy light, Cherubs floating everywhere. Beads around her long thin neck, Each a world for which she cares, Gazing down at each small speck, Seeing each one’s special flare. Arm extends and points the way,...

How weird and eerily appears, that solar surge, Aurora Borealis, 1865, by Hudson River School's Frederic Edwin Church. The skyscape is so alien, and yet alive, with faint and dancing lights, blue, yellow, red and brown, above an opaque hemisphere. Ice mountains thrive. Although it seems as if the tiny...

The Three Little Pigs —a story retold There were three little pigs, one, two, three —roly-poly and pink, as pink as could be— porkers that talked just like you and me. Building their houses, these pigs were all three. Two built their houses of stuff that was free: the first...

Avocado Grove On dry, withered leafs Until drizzle leaves Sitting silently The fruit’s ripe, big crops Giant green rain drops Hang abundantly The bark thick and strong Like cultivated gong* Grows there upwardly I share with you fate You share with me shade Time moves patiently. The fresh spring breeze...

Nearby a wasp lights, twitching its pointed stinger in the summer heat. As I drive my car, an eagle flies overhead. How far have I come? An ant climbs slowly up the old man's hairy arm. He flings it away. Continuously, the rooster crows all day long. He is barely...

They operate contrary to the rules of common sense that we hold dear as proof that what we know is right, that we’re no fools and senses we possess perceive the truth. They ramble through eleven dimensions. Their motions, seemingly governed by chance, confuse and amend our comprehensions – on...

The Farmer’s Wife He may as well be sitting on a piece Of junk john-boat out on some open lake. The field is shorn, divested of its fleece. The hay is tedded and the rusty rake Is resting now beside the tree-lined wall, Next to the tedder, stilly looking on,...

1.  In 373, at Antioch, Jerome asked himself if he were not a disciple of Cicero rather than Christ, his eternal home; and thereupon abandoned his early love for philosophy, law, language, and literature, and devoted himself instead to the remove of Hebrew, Greek, and translating Holy Scripture, seeking sure...

Bereft of the poetry of his soul The knight took refuge in the house of death Into darkness he went with his mind crushed Wandering lust gone and with his own trust. The enchanter gone And disenchantment entered And the land of La Mancha Slowly turned to dust & cinders....

A disturbing riddle was told to me: “The city of evil that starts with ‘B’ That has six more letters after that one, Will be, by bloody tragedy, undone. “The nations all love this mighty city, Not in their words, but in reality; The city fills the nations with their...

The chicken crossed the road I heard. Which was so silly, so absurd, Especially for so dumb a bird. But when she started to come back She met an eighteen-wheeler Mack That smacked her with a great big whack! Then squawking, flapping in the air The chicken cried out in...