Terebess Asia Online (TAO)
Index
Home

John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950)
From the Japanese
In Visions of the Evening. London: MacDonald, 1913.
http://themargins.net/anth/1910-1919/fletcherfrom.html

I
I only live in the light:
Let there be light for me,
Or let the night come soon!

II
Winter,–
Summer’s rainbow-mantle of colour fades
Back, once again, to white.

III
I cry,
Echo answers faintly.
Echo is a poet.

IV
A breeze ruffles the rain-pool.
– Even our griefs cannot find rest.
Aimlessly up and down they are tossed by the wind.

V
Snowflakes rise and fall on the wind:
Even Winter has her white flocks of silent birds.

VI
I gazed through the mist:
Was it a goddess I saw?
– The mist silently lifted and showed me – an open tomb.

Japanese Prints (1918)
Japanese Prints is based on particular works in the Clarence Buckingham collection of ukiyoe at the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://themargins.net/anth/1910-1919/fletcherprints.html

Moods

A poet’s moods:
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.

Mid-Summer Dusk

Swallows twittering at twilight:
Waves of heat
Churned to flames by the sun.

Evening Bell from a Distant Temple

A bell in the fog
Creeps out echoing faintly
The pale broad flashes
Of vibrating twilight,
Faded gold.