TO A LIQUID AMBER TREE

TO A LIQUID AMBER TREE

Through summer rain and sun your season's worth

Was in the flourishing of green life, bringing

Leaf-mantle's shade, rich on the morning earth,

Wide-fingered branches sheltering the singing,

Light-winged inhabitants of their. But since

Eternal time soft-turns till autumn's caught

The dawning sun in misty breath that hints

At grey-eyed winter's sharp and frosty thought

You have transformed your sun-born plenitude

To constellations of wild stars, flame-hued.

As golden as a harvest moon arising

Through eastern night's autumnal, misty skies,

As yellow as a candle flame aspiring

To cheer with single light night-wintered eyes,

As red as west-descending solar face

Farewelling day through scattered cloud,

Are these your leaves, still hanging in their place,

But changing to a multi-coloured crowd.

Like youthful memories made jewels by years,

Soon shed as silently as secret tears.

Such is the raiment of the days, once green

With expectations of arising powers:

A prospect of accomplishment that's seen

To fade to golden failings with the hours

That flee in multitudes as fleeting days

And pass too swiftly through the flying years.

Forever to the future passing, plays

Hard time's relentless march, and in our ears

All that once was of hope and purposed reason

Is melody now lost in fading's season.

The gold-red leaves are shed and flutter down,

Lie brittle now before the winter's birth;

And from remembered glory die to brown,

And vanish in the all-absorbing earth.

Bare branches are a skeleton of tree,

The seeming death of life's green flame, imploring

Repeal of winter's temporal decree,

And trembling in the freezing wind's rough warring.

And in the season of the early frost

The memory of bursting life seems lost.

But deep is life and time has phoenix wings,

And every dying is a being born,

And all that's lost is secret gain and brings,

Like night, a never-lived-before, new dawn.

So winters bring new buds of spring, allow

The sole bird of the fire-death to soar,

Declaring life in ever-fuller power,

Its new-born glory greater than before...

And thus in time time's endless purpose shows;

And thus in time time's tree forever grows.

LAST BLUE- A RENGA

LAST BLUE - a renga

Last blue of summer dusk, cool

With grey cloud. Breeze sways branches.

Rows of Norfolk pines-

Above the seaside buildings,

Dark, living towers.

LONELY ONE IN AUTUMN

LONELY ONE IN AUTUMN

(from the German of Hans Bethge based on a poem by Tchang-Tsi)

Wild autumn mists blue-drift across the lake.

The grass stands white, all covered with hoar-frost.

You'd think an artist had been scattering

Fine jade dust on the delicate, fair flowers.

Sweet perfume from the flowers has fled.

A cold wind bends their stems right down.

Soon withered, golden leaves of lotus blooms

Will drift by on the water's face.

My heart is tired. My little lamp

Is guttered with a splutter, calling me to sleep.

I come to you, true-trusted resting place.

Yes, give me rest. I crave to be refreshed.

I weep long in my loneliness.

The autumn in my heart holds on and on.

Sun of love, will you never shine once more

And gently dry up all my bitter tears?