Jujube September 7, 2025

Cubes

Let us fold the wings of our visions. It’s night. Buildings, all angular, on each other topple. Shadows are fractured. The street lamp is a broken flame. — Vladmir Nabokov

Jujube August 31, 2025

The Moment Before

The castle, the river, murmur the stillness; The grass, the trees, deepen the green haze; Birds lift, never quite ready for parting. - Jujube

Jujube August 28, 2025

Qixi – Chinese Valentine’s Day

In the quiet pavilion, the sky is clear, the night holds its breath. Spider silk gleams, incense spirals lovers’ stars meet— I lean back, watching the moonlight drift through the paulownia shade. Time slips soft into dark. - Jujube

Jujube August 24, 2025

Music

The fountain, loftily floating its wondrous, its silvery voice, plashes, and quivers, convoking mirages of love and of loss. — Vladimir Nabokov

Jujube August 17, 2025

Encountering Rain at Lone Mountain Temple

水鹭双飞起， 风荷一向翻。 – 白居易 The egret pair takes flight together, The lotus leaves sway in the breeze. – Bai Juyi (772-846)

Jujube August 10, 2025

The Deserted Village

Here as I take my solitary rounds, Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruined grounds, And, many a year elapsed, return to view Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew – Oliver Goldsmith

Jujube August 3, 2025

Drinking Song

Each red petal, A wine-boat, adrift— Raise it, slow, Not to spill What’s left of the day. - Jujube, inspired by Ge Lifang (d.1164)

Jujube July 27, 2025

Sunset Over Lake

A language of loss and renewal, etched in the mist. The willows lean in, trailing ink across the shore. What we remember is always half-shadow, half-dream – The lake holds it all.

Jujube July 20, 2025

Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. – Langston Hughes

Jujube July 13, 2025

Moon Palace

The mist chills the music notes, wind barely stirs the robe — drenched in dew-light we stand, seeped in silence - Jujube, inspired by Zhu Dunru (1081-1159)

Jujube July 6, 2025

Art

I am tying up all my love in this, With all its hopes and fears, With all its anguish and all its bliss, And its hours as heavy as years. — James Thomson

Jujube June 29, 2025

Butterflies

蝶々や 夢うつつとは 知らずとも Butterflies— Be it dream or wakefulness? They flit, unknowing. — jujube

Jujube June 22, 2025

The Memory of the Young

The memory of the young is leap-by-leap. It sweeps itself for clues to its song. — Maria Hummel

Jujube June 15, 2025

Five Chinese Verses

Don’t speak to me of sorghum Red fields, pressed up toward a sky Whatever called to me there Too wild, attempting a face Old verses for my father Dignify the cooling page Black earth is the word it makes Tilts forward, consequential — Wendy Xu

Jujube June 8, 2025

Reflections

Like liquid shadows. The ice is thin Whose mirror smears them as it intercepts withdrawing colours; and where the crust, as if a skin livid with tautening scars… — by Charles Tomlinson

Jujube June 1, 2025

Solemn Traveling

It has been solemn traveling A night and a day This road running straightly northwards; None went my way. — Rosamund Dargan Thomson

Jujube May 25, 2025

Memorial Day

The morning may be brilliant; the season is one of brilliances—sunlight through the fountained willow behind us, its splayed shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward, irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones. — Michael Anania

Jujube May 18, 2025

Cézanne

… nothing can stop the truth of it art is all we can say to reverse the chain of events and make a pileup of passion to match the stars No choice but between a certain variation hard to perceive in a shade of blue…

Jujube May 11, 2025

The morning after / my death

Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. — by Etel Annan

Jujube May 4, 2025

Morning

Color is new upon each sunlit surface; lifting lines are reimbursed with flight; cool and level lie the planes of morning covered with light. — by Edith Henrich