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Kung walked
        by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
        and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
        and Tian the low speaking
And “we are unknown,” said Kung,
“You will take up charioteering?
        “Then you will become known,
“Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery?
“Or the practice of public speaking?”
And Tseu-lou said, “I would put the defences in order,”
And Khieu said, “If I were lord of a province
“I would put it in better order than this is.”
And Tchi said, “I would prefer a small mountain temple,
“With order in the observances,
        with a suitable performance of the ritual,”
And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute
The low sounds continuing
        after his hand left the strings,
And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,
And he looked after the sound:
        “The old swimming hole,
“And the boys flopping off the planks,
“Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins.”
        And Kung smiled upon all of them equally.
And Thseng-sie desired to know:
        “Which had answered correctly?”
And Kung said, “They have all answered correctly,
“That is to say, each in his nature.”
And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
        Yuan Jang being his elder,
For Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
        be receiving wisdom.
And Kung said
        “You old fool, come out of it,
“Get up and do something useful.”
        And Kung said
“Respect a child’s faculties
“From the moment it inhales the clear air,
“But a man of fifty who knows nothng
        Is worthy of no respect.”
And “When the prince has gathered about him
“All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed.”
And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:
        If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;
        And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.
And Kung gave the words “order”
and “brotherly deference”
And said nothing of the “life after death.”
And he said
        “Anyone can run to excesses,
“It is easy to shoot past the mark,
“It is hard to stand firm in the middle.”

And they said: If a man commit ******
        Should his father protect him, and hide him?
And Kung said:
        He should hide him.

And Kung gave his daughter to Kong-Tchang
        Although Kong-Tchang was in prison.
And he gave his niece to Nan-Young
        although Nan-Young was out of office.
And Kung said “Wan ruled with moderation,
        “In his day the State was well kept,
“And even I can remember
“A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
“I mean, for things they didn’t know,
“But that time seems to be passing.
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
But that time seems to be passing.”
And Kung said, “Without character you will
        “be unable to play on that instrument
“Or to execute the music fit for the Odes.
“The blossoms of the apricot
        “blow from the east to the west,
“And I have tried to keep them from falling.”
Tim Eichhorn Aug 2014
With regards to Thomas Sayers Ellis*

Look at the
    Lucent lava lamps,
Dark craters
    Hiring hands.
We walked,
    Mimicking magma.
Hot, why is
    This heat?
Forget Vulcan
    And his illusion
Of kaleidoscopes,
    A rip tide
On the shore
    Of our conscious minds.
We held fire,
    Pretending to swim
Underground,
    But only out
Of pure respect.
    Some had boots
Made with
    The clippings
Of funky tripwire,
    Others wore suits
With goggles
    Clamped to their faces,
Gripping like
    Bay Area earthquakes.
One-by-one,
    Jang-strangs were
Attached to us and
    Hurled into the Pit
With rhythmic rituals,
    Waves of S and P
Flailed away
    Like flags.
One nation
    Under a new.
No one looked away
    From the fiery daze.
No one wept.
Syed S M Tabish Mar 2014
Main Aur mere roommates
aksar Yeh Baatain Karte Hain
Ghar saaf hota to kaisa hota
Main kitchen saaf karta, tum bathrooom dhote
main hall saaf karta, tum balcony dekhte
Log is baat pe hairaan hote
aur us baat pe haste….

Main aur mere roommates,
aksar Yeh Baatain Karte Hain
Yeh hara bhara sink hai
ya bartanon ki jang chidi hui hai
Yeh colour full kitchen hai
ya masalon se holi kheli hai
Hai farsh ki nayi design
ya doodh, beer se dhuli hui hain

Yeh cellphone hai ya dhakkan,
sleeping bag ya kisika aanchal,
ye airfreshner ka naya flavour hai,
ya trash bag se ati badboo
Yeh pattiyon ki hai sarsarahut
ke heater phirse kharab hua hai
Yeh sonchta hain roommate kab se gum sum -
Ke jab ke usko bhi yeh khabar hai
Ke machar nahi hai, kaheen nahi hai
magar uska dil hai ke kah raha hai
machar yaheen hai, yaheen kaheen hai !

Toand ( pet ) ki ye haalat, meri bhi hai, uski bhi,
dil mein ek tasvir idhar bhi hai, udhar bhi
Karne ko bohot kuch hai magar kab kare hum
Kab tak yoon hi is tarah rahe hum
Dil kahta hai Safeway se koi vaccum cleaner la de
ye Carpet jo jine ko zoonz raha hai, fikwa de
Hum saaf rahe sakte hai, logon ko bata dain,
Haan hum roommates hai – roommates hai – roommates hai

Ab dil main yehi baaaat, idhar bhi hai udhar bhi..

Sab ko bata dain..
Fahredin Shehu Apr 2012
Black
Empty cans
No liquid evaporated
In the air full of pride
Polluted grains of soul
Lost their consistency
Pure fluids of light
Erupts as marshmallow bombs
Death squad penetrates deeply
Aiming to meet Anubis
A Tsunami whirled its wish
Passion and glutton declared independence
The dream of becoming a parallel nation
To co-habit with leukemia of creativity
A *** drive 4×4 retired
A crippled veteran of passion
Bags for the mercy of soulless utilitarian army of human entity
Better said plankton a ****-plankton of miserable creatures
Even worms and larva are disgusted by our hatred
*****, a skunk of fear
An eclipse of love that spans for ages
From birth to death
A spectrum displays its ripeness
******* liberty as blast
A dazzling dance of shaped and amoeboid forms of manifestation
Truth
Bitter the honey with suffer
Powder a chamomile with royal jelly and ginseng
All of sudden a wind blows
Spores of the old pines
White
The soul of parallel nation of Angeloid
Is striving pleasure of life?
Lives now
Perpetually woofs a rainbow muslin with
the divine light
Inter-woofed dress
Newborn immaculate fellows
Perfuming
Oh those smell of paradise
Mint, Neroli, Oakmoss, Amber
A bouquet of divine pleasure
And Acacia kissed by a queen bee
Yes the queen of Enneagram
Of course
The work produces sweet essences
Oh Sarmouni of our Millennia
Melt the cataract-ic lance so they may see the beauty
Heal the flu so they may smell fresh ozone
A charged circle of light and love
Overwhelm
Remove the pulp from the reed
So may divine tune perform light?
Tao
May be your torchbearer
In the dark valley and by then you may
see a spectrum
That encircles an infant fear
For an eternal life
Yet I kiss that that time sequence
Where Jin and Jang harmoniously co-habit
I a Feng Shui of Love
Defragmenter of hate’s files
Zipper of dark matrixes
Arranger
So you may know they do exists
So you try them in order to enjoy the sweetness
of life’s honey
In this porcelain valley
Where goodness and mischief
Hand in hand are gliding furiously
Alas pure the morning with dew of love
Oxidize hate with apple vinegar
Sing to celebrate both solstices and have a cup of vine
That swoon you
That filters all starry
Cells of brain and ganglia
Perfume her navel with rosewater and kiss, kiss, kiss
Do a divine Tantra
With all visible and invisible and semi-visible spirits
Kiss topaz of her eyes
Kiss ruby of her heart
Kiss diamond of her nail
Kiss cooper of her feet ankle
Kiss jade of her bones
Kiss sapphire of her cells
And a flame-y waterfall of hair
And a silky *****…
Oh…kiss and kiss and kiss whatever belongs to her
Make her a necklace
With your purest and noblest spermatozoids
Then call her as you wish
Wisdom, Hikkmah, Sophia
Or simply Goddess that makes you Angeloid.
—-
Arabic for wisdom, we disregard language we are concentrated
on substance on quint essence
Greek for wisdom
Nigel Morgan Apr 2013
It took him a week to master thought-diversion. He would leave home to walk to work and the moment the door was shut it was as though she followed him like a shadow on snow. If he wasn’t careful the ten-minute walk would be swallowed up in an imagined conversation. He had already allowed himself too many dark thoughts of tears and silences. He saw her befreckled by weeks in a light he had only read about. She would be a stranger for a while, a visitor from another world (until she gradually lost the glow on her skin and the smell of Africa became an elusive memory). He was frightened that he would be overwhelmed by her physical grace enriched by   southern summer and the weight of her experience, having so little to offer in return. So he practised thought diversion: as her shadow entered his consciousness he would divert his attention to China of the Third Century and what he would write next about Zuo Fen and her illustrious brother.

Sister and brother Zou gradually took on a fictional life. This he fuelled by reading poetry of the period and his daily beachcombing along the shores of the Internet. He built up an impressive bibliography for his next visit to the university library. Even in the Han Dynasty there was so much material to study, though much of it the stuff of secondary sources.

One morning he took down from his library shelf Max Loehr’s The Great Painters of China and immediately became seduced by the court images of Ku Kai’chih. This painter is the only artist of this period of Chinese antiquity to be represented today by extant copies. There was also a possible original, a handscroll in The British Museum. It is said Ku was the first portrait artist to give a psychological interpretation of the person portrayed. Before him there seems in portraiture to have been little differentiation in the characterization of figures. His images hold a wonder all their own.

As David looked at the book’s illustrative plates, showing details from The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Palace Ladies, the world of Zuo Fen began to reveal itself. A ‘palace lady’ she certainly was, and so possibly similar to the image before him: a concubine reclines in her bamboo screen and silk-curtained bed; her Lord sits respectively at right-angles to her and half-way down her bed. The artist has captured his feet deftly lifting themselves out of square-toed slippers, whilst Zuo Fen drapes one arm over the painted bamboo screen, her manner resolute and confident. Perhaps she has taken note of those admonitions of her instructress. Her Lord has turned his head to gaze at her directly and to listen. Restless hands hide beneath his gown.

        ‘Honoured Lord, as we have talked lately of flowing water and the symmetry of love I am reminded of the god and goddess of Xiang River’.
       ‘In the Nine Songs of Qu Yaun?’
       ‘Yes, my Lord. The opening verse has the Prince of Xiang say: You have not come; I wait with apprehension / And wonder who makes you prevaricate on your island / When I am so splendidly and perfectly attired in your honour?
       ‘Hmm. . . so you favour this new gown.’
       ‘It is finely made, but perhaps does not suit the light of this hour’.
       ‘Let the Yangzi River flow calmly, / I look for you, but you have not come.’
      ‘I gaze at the distance in a trance, /  Only to see the grey green waters run by.

        ‘Honourable Companion, I fear you feel my mind lies elsewhere . ‘
       ‘I know you ride the cassia boat downstream.’
       ‘Indeed, my oar is of cassia and my rudder of orchid’.
        ‘I fancy that you build a house underwater, thatching it with a roof of lotus leaves . . .’
       ‘Well, if that is so, drop your sleeves into the Yangzi River and present the thin dress you wear to the bay of Li.’
       ‘I am in awe of my Lord’s recall of such verses . . . I love the Lady of Xiang’s description of the underwater house . . . with its curtains of fig leaves and screens of split basil.’
      ‘But will you send me all the spirits of Juiyi mountains to bring me to your side . . . will they come together as numerous as clouds?’
      ‘My Lord, my nose perspires . . .’
      ‘I offer my jade ring to the Yangzi River / and yield my jade pendant to the bay of Li. / I gather galingale fronds on an islet of fragrant grasses, / still hoping to present them to you. / If I leave, I might not have another chance. / So I’d rather stay here and linger a little longer.’
        ‘I gather the powerful roots of galingale / hoping to offer them to you who are still far away. / If I leave, I might not have another chance. / So I’d rather stay here and linger a little longer
.’
      ‘Even though your nose perspires and your ******* harden . . .’
        ‘Kind Lord, you have taken the wrong role in the dialogue. Surely it is the Plain Girl who gives such advise to the Yellow Emperor.’
        ‘And I thought only men read the Sunujing . . .’
        ‘You forget I have a dear brother . . .’
       ‘With whom you have read the Sunujing! . . and no I have not forgotten . . . he sought permission to travel to the Tai mountains, some fool’s errand my minister states.’
         ‘He may surprise you on his return.’
        ‘Only you can surprise me now.’
       ‘My Lord, you know I lack such gifts . . . I hear your sandals dropping to the floor’.
      ‘I sail my boat ever closer to the wind / and the waves are
stirred like drifting snow.’
     ‘I can hear my beloved calling my name. / I shall hasten so that I can ride beside him.



She seemed so child-like in that singular room of the garden annex. Her head had buried itself between the two pillows so only her ever-curling hair was visible. Opening a small portion of the curtains drawn across the blue metalled-framed French windows, he gazed at her sleeping in the dull light of just dawn. Outside a river-mist lay across the autumnal garden where they had walked yesterday before their tour of the estate. Unable to sleep he had sat in their hosts’ kitchen and mapped their guided walk in the rain, noting down his observations of this remote valley in a sprawling narrative. On the edge of moorland it was a world constrained and contained, with its brooding batchelor-owned farms and the silent legacy everywhere of a Victorian hagiographer and antiquarian. As he wrote and drew, snapshot-like images of her intervened unbidden. She both entranced and purposeful in a physical landscape she delighted in and knew how to read. Although longing to lie next to her he had sat gently for a moment on her bed, feeling the weight of her sleeping form move towards him as the mattress sagged, his bare feet cold on the stone floor. He placed his poem on the empty companion pillow, and returned through the chill of unheated rooms to the desert warmth of the Agared kitchen.


Lying in your arms
I am surprised to hear a voice
That seems in the right key
To sing what is in my heart.

After so many dark
inarticulate hours
I,  desperate
To express this love
That drowns me,
Suddenly come up for breath
(after floundering in
the cold water of night)
to find there were words
like little boats of paper
carrying a tea light,
a vivid yellow flame
on the black depths,
floating gently towards you . . .

Oh log of memory
record these sailing messages
So carefully placed, rehearsed,
Launched and found complete.

Knowing I must not talk of love,
Knowing no other word
(feeling the shape of your knee
with my right hand),
knowing this time will not
come again, I summon
to myself one last intimacy
before the diary of reason closes.


Zou Fen often wrote about herself as a rustic illiterate, country-born in a thatched hut, but given (inexplicably) the purple chamber at the Palace. As the daughter of a significant officer of the Imperial Court she appears to have developed a fictional persona to induce and taste the extremes of melancholy. Otherwise she is mind-travelling the natural world from her courtyard garden, observing in the growth of a tiny plant or the flight of distant bird, the whole pattern of nature. These things fill her rhapsodies and fu poems.

As a young man Zuo Si had wild flights of fantasy. He imagined himself as a warrior. In verse he recalls reading Precepts on the Art of War by Ssu-ma Jang Chu. With a scholar’s knife he writes of quelling the barbarian hordes (the Tibetans) in their incursions along the Yang-tze. When triumphant he would not accept the Emperor’s gift of a title and estate, but would retire to a cottage in the country. Then again, as a student scholar, he describes failure, penury and isolation ‘left stranded like a fish in a pond, without – he hasn’t a single penny in his account: within – not a peck of grain in the larder.’ He was never thus.

Like all good writers sister and brother Zou were the keenest observers. They took into and upon themselves what they saw and gathered from the lives of others, and so often their playful painted characters hide the truth of their real lives. David looks at his dishevelled poetry and wonders about its veracity. He always thought of Rachel as his first (and only) reader; but what if she were not? What would he write? What would his poems say?

*I lie on my back in her bed.
On her stomach, her arm on my chest,
She props herself against me
so that I see her face in close up.
She gazes
out of the window

I don’t think I have slept at all,
My own bed was so cold.
She warms me for a while.

All night
I’ve been thinking
what to say to her,
and now I am too weary
to speak.

I am in despair,
Yet I ache with joy
At having her so close.

I wish I knew who I was,
What I could be,
What I might become.

A voice tells me
that such intimacy
will not come again.
Falling into the jangce jang
We sing with a clear
voice

Pass me the passport
Sail on the roads
Of perpetual
Drum

Dream of baobabs
Dream of saharas
Levitations

Crush as snake eggs
Thou lamentations

Make me a poet
Surpass me as teardrops
Mingle in every waterfall

Augure my autumn
Argonaut my silken
Wool crave me as a mad
Hatter

Call me a beauty
I'll be your beast
Keith Ren Nov 2011
The bandiferd spots
Mark the afterglow dots,
The fervor that hangs in the throes.

I've often jang-herdled
The silk left uncurdled,
My comes and agains have their goes.

I've left the lust listless,
And appleseeds restless,
My truths are not something she blows.

The cherry's well-fallen,
And I've all but forgotten,
The chastities I never chose.
****-zip-bang shenyang ang;
Mang mangue flang hang prang pang;
Pinang lalang unhang kang youth defang khang;
Marang schlang gang wolfgang ying-yang xuanzang.
Klang sea get wrang.

Sang tsang li-kang gangue langues.
Thang drang crang tang harangue sprang zhang shang siang whang strang hang verdinsgang chuang;
Brang lang nang bhang xiaogang mahuang durang huang.
Hange hsiang und;

Zang rang kuomintang ourang section gang hang.
Krang pahang boomerang fang guilt;
Spang gang;
Hangsang xinjiang tunkelang slang tangue nanchang clang chang bangue vang ziyangbaoguang hwang pang the tsiang alang dang ylang-ylang.

Tang liang.
Overhang langue pyongyang.
Cangue sangh mustang stang frang yang lange kukang farang **** care sturm t'ang;
Zamang drang chiang road a jang;
levi eden r Aug 2018
it's still dark out but i know it's the morning.
i can hear the rain titter tattering on my window from where i'm sitting at my desk.
in this moment, right now, all i could think about was when the lights would go out from thunderstorms and my siblings and i would sit on my parents bed with them.
we would talk for hours, until we fell asleep,
sometimes my dad would tell us about how he grew up
and sometimes my mom would tell us stories about when we were just born.
in this moment, right now, all i can think about is air.
how it feels my lungs only for me to let it go then keep it close again then let go.
i can see the clouds slowly disappearing, taking rain showers with them.
the morning sun stretches across the infinite sky,
greeting me through my blinds.
i know the feeling of longing and i thank the sky for bringing almost forgotten memories every night.
Hira malik Dec 2019
Angaray, Shamma-n kay aagay
Yun dikhtay hain,
Jaisay shola bujh sa jayy kissi udaas shaam main
Aur kuch nahin
Yay ehsaas ki maut hai
Jiss Kay Kafan main paiwasta  chaid
Najanay kuen sakoot orhay baithay hain.....

Insaan ka wajood itna aarzi kuen hai
Kay jab roay tou bulbulay ki manind phatt jay
Aur jab ** saakan, tou kainaat naan chalay.....
Kia karna aisay but-t ka
Jo khud ko jaga naan sakay
Har simt hai bass hoo
Haq hoo
Ya hoo ka alam
Har lafz main bass hoo....

Anbaar hai kay uthaya nahin jata
Har baar sulaya nahin jata
Bass chain aur roh ki ikk jang hai
Aur uss jung ka haara ikk thakka insaan......
Its in Urdu language. I am hating this forum for not expressing urdu in its form but in roman english

— The End —