poetry ⁽⁹⁶⁾

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 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

Jujube April 27, 2025

No Title

虚斋寂寂茶烟细， 小瓶斜插数枝梅。 An empty study, silent – tea vapor softly curls; Plum sprigs tilt in a slender vase. — Hallucinated by Deepseek

Jujube April 20, 2025

The Happy Earth

The air is like a butterfly With frail blue wings. The happy earth looks at the sky. And sings. —Joyce Kilmer

Jujube April 13, 2025

Sailing to Byzantium, III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, Verne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It…

Jujube April 6, 2025

I’ll Twine White Violets

I’ll twine white violets and the myrtle green; Narcissus will I twine and lilies sheen; I’ll twine sweet crocus and the hyacinth blue; And last I twine the rose, love’s token true: That all may form a wreath of beauty, meet To deck my Heliodora’s…

Jujube March 30, 2025

Apple Blossoms

One evening in winter when nothing has been enough, when the days are too short, the nights too long and cheerless, the secret and docile buds of the apple blossoms begin their quick ascent to light. Night after interminable night the sugars pucker and swell…

Jujube March 23, 2025

Hiking With the Old Acorn Lady

If we watch the trail And listen to the trees; Squirrels chatter In ancient languages, A moon can rise From behind a flower, You will capture The wind with your hair, The sun with your eyes, And balance your burden So it is light. —…

Jujube March 16, 2025

Snow

Upon the hard crest of a snow-drift We tread, and grown quiet, we walk On towards my house, white, enchanted; Our mood is too tender for talk. — ANNA AKHMATOVA

Jujube March 9, 2025

To the Melody of ‘Yumeiren’: On Seeing Plum Blossoms in Yizhou

天涯也有江南信, 梅破知春近。 夜阑风细得香迟, 不道晓来开遍、向南枝。 – 黄庭坚《虞美人·宜州見梅作》 Even at the edge of the world, whispers of Jiangnan unfold, Plum blossoms burst, proclaiming spring’s approach. Late in the night, their fragrance drifts on a tender breeze. Unaware that by dawn, blooms full on south-facing branches. — Huang…