About the Author
Books

POETRY  
PROSE
ESSAYS
INTERVIEW
From the book Kliazma and Yauza
From the book The Wild Rose
From the book Tristan and Isolde
From the book Old Songs
From the book Gates. Windows. Arches
From the book Stanzas in the Manner of Alexander Pope
From the book Stellae and Inscriptions
From the book The Iambic Verses
The Chinese Travelogue  
From An Unfinished Book
From the book The Evening Song
From the book Elegies
From the book The Beginning of a Book
The Chinese Travelogue
(1986)

If you could dull its perspicuity, free it from chaos, limit its gleam,
liken it to a grain of dust, then it would seem to exist clearly.
Lao-Tse
18

Let us praise our earth,
let us give praise to the moon on the water,
that which is with no one and with everyone,
everywhere and nowhere –
the size of a swallow’s eye
of a crumb of dry bread,
of a ladder on a butterfly’s wings,
of a ladder thrown down from the sky –
not only disaster and pity,
the bridle of my heart:
but because the wonderful
water smiled.
Let us praise the bathing
of priceless dark branches
in the living panes of glass
and all the sleepless spirits
in every seed of the earth
and that rewards exist
that ward off evil
and that the glory of the earth
is like the gardener and the garden.

Richard McKane

***

18

Let us praise our earthly sphere,
the moon on the water,
and that which is with none and all
here and not here –
the size of a swallow’s eye
of a crumb of dry bread
of a ladder on a butterfly’s wings,
of a ladder thrown down from heaven.
My heart is bridled
not just by woe and by pity
but also by the miraculous water’s smile.
Let us praise the swimming of dark
precious branches in living glass,
and, above each grain in the earth,
the sleepless souls of all who have passed,
and the fact there are rewards,
that we can ward off evil
that there is praise in the world,
like a gardener in a garden.

Andrew Wachtel
1. I was surprised by...
2. The pond speaks...
3. They don’t fall, though they fall...
4. There, on the hill...
5. Do you know...
6. I shall only see...
7. The boat flies...
8. The roofs are raised at the edges...
9. Unhappy...
10. Great is the artist who knows no debt...
11. With tenderness and depth...
12. Perhaps you are the precious ring of the spirit...
13. Will we really part...
14. Flute answers flute...
15. They say, they have gone on the white road...
16. You know that I love you so much...
17. When we decide to set out...
 18. Let us praise our earth...
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