ON MEETING AN OLD FRIEND (After OU YANG HSIU)
by George Freek

When he and I were young
we would stare at the stars,
and question God’s existence,
thinking our answers made sense.
When he played the piano his fingers
would glide over the keyboard
like swans across a lake,
though the sounds weren’t so great.
He no longer plays at all now.
His fingers are crippled with arthritis.
Sparse hair sits atop of his head
like an empty robin’s nest.
His teeth are crooked, those that remain.
Looking at me, I’m sure
his thoughts are the same.
Now I watch the sun as it sets
like a flag being lowered.
Well, today I wrote this poem.
That thought must cheer me.
And there is a bit of light  
from a sliver of moon,
but it won’t keep out the gloom.



ON WAKING IN EARLY MORNING (After TU FU)

The flowers drop their petals.
I’ve watched autumn come, now
I watch it depart. The robins
Which nested in my tree,
Leave early to fly south.
My wife of forty years is in the ground.
Tonight, even her nagging
Would be a welcome sound.
Everything has abandoned me.
All I have left is self-pity.
Drunken memories are useless.
I’m afraid to drink wine.
At least we had no children
to mar our old age. Alone,
I stare at a pale moon.
I can hardly see it.
It barely lights the sky.



MONET’S WORLD

He colors in the sky.
He sees it as blue.
He colors the river.
He sees that blue, too.
And those leaves will
never fall on ground
where bones are hidden
in black shrouds.
Where death is not,
it cannot be proud.
The truth lies in my mind,
Claude claims. He works
in the cold, in the rain.
At night he sits on a balcony
to stare at the stars.
They gleam like the eyes
of gods,
he knows are not there.