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Tree of Life [Haiku]
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“There Is a Bird in the Tree” by Kabir [w/ Audio]
On this tree is a bird:
It dances in the joy of life.
No one knows where it is:
And who knows what the burden
Of its music may be?
Where the branches throw a deep shade,
There does it have its nest:
And it comes in the evening
And flies away in the morning,
And says not a word
Of that which it means.
None tell me of this bird
That sings within me.
It is neither coloured nor colourless:
It has neither form nor outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable,
The Infinite, and the Eternal;
And no one marks
When it comes and goes.
Kabir says, “O brother Sadhu!
Deep is the mystery.
Let wise men seek to know
where rests that bird.”
NOTE: This is the translation by Rabindranath Tagore from the 1915 text, One Hundred Poems of Kabir. This is poem #30 (XXX) of that volume.
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Black Crow [Haiku]
The Brave One [Haiku]
one hundred birds
startle at my presence;
one eyeballs me.
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Embarrassment of Riches [Haiku]
early summer:
birds trudge through green paddies
that they usually prowl.
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Lonely Egret [Haiku]
Barren Hill [Haiku]
the trees are bare;
winter winds picked them clean.
a bird lands, chirps, & flees.
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Painted Stork [Haiku]
a painted stork
stands so still on one leg,
passers think it fake.
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Barbwire Bee-Eater [Senryū]
a bee-eater lands on a barbed wire fence for a cozy rest.
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
Old thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 