Almost to the End

If Bookshelves Groan

If bookshelves groan
It must be with pleasure -
Imagine being weighed down
By beauty and truth in print -
Let us pray
Buckled by Joyce and Prvert
Testing the strength of your muscles -
What delicious agony
Strain my tendons, Petrarch
With all your mental Laura lust.
After all
It is what one carries that counts.

Paris, November 14, 1987

These Haiku-like poems and longer verses represent nighttime thoughts and inspirations written down while reading Sam Hamill's translations in The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bash, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets. Some of them are actually based on the work of these poets, but most are simply inspired by them. Others come from the author's own musings.