Category Archives: Poetry Illustrated

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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

* I use “hallucinated” because I didn’t ask Deepseek to write a poem for me, but search for something. It made this up along the way and attributed it to a poet in Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Not a bad couplet though.

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 knows not what it is, and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

— W.B. Yeats

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 tresses sweet.

— Meleager, ca. 90 BC (Translated from Greek by Goldwin Smith)

“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
into green slips, green
silks. And just as you find

yourself at the end
of winter’s long, cold
rope, the blossoms open

like pink thimbles
and that black dollop
of shine called

bumblebee stumbles in.

— Susan Kelly-Dewitt

“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.

— J. W. Rivers