Michael Wooff

Flower arranging has a feminine and oriental ring
feminine as if it called for dainty fingers
delicacy
oriental like the martial arts and ma
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The cat opened its eyes
And the sun flooded in.
The cat then closed its eyes
And the sunlight stayed in.
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For your visionary quality
Lovers of art have singled you out
And avoidance of frivolity.
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With water on red porphyry that tinkling falls
The rose-trees of Iran their cool murmurs mingle
And ring-doves in brown studies make soft cooing calls.
The willow-warbler, shrill, the hornet, jealous soul,
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The fog has packed its things
In its cottonwool case.
The fog emptiness brings
To my house lost in space.
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The bhairav raga's final cadences suffuse
The palace with an eery brightness, sitar-still,
Then silent, dead. Hiranyakasipu could kill
Both son-musician and the god Vishnu for whose
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In this grove of Jetavana as in Eden
Rama stands with his beloved sloe-eyed Sita.
Here all is light and sweetness, here lurks no demon
To disturb a meditation on the Gita.
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That Krishna had all the luck. Was it his blue throat
That made the milkmaids swoon to give themselves to him?
His prowess in subduing demons? The high note
Only he could reach on his silver flute? His slim
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On walls that inside, outside throng,
I know it will not last for long,
burn golden rays of sunshine.
The day has just uplifted
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1930) The woods appear to be asleep
like winter lambs and winter sheep.
I too am covered as with snow,
hiding from my alter ego.
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When winter comes snow's purity
keeps us at home in unity.
Fun reigns, we invite the muses
when the season its warmth loses.
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These fiery atoms that fizzle in the snow,
These golden sparks and blue and crystalline clusters
To which, in the sunlight, winter imparts lustre,
Adorn the snow's white hair that the winter winds blow.
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