Evening by the Harbor
 

Three gulls dart, 

whirl around hotel antennas 

then speed off toward the sea. 

Evening saunters on the roads, 

in the girls’ steps

and the vendors’ carts. 

But night will come, even to this poor neighborhood.

Night will come, 

and the girls’ steps will drift away,

and the vendors’ carts. 

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Three gulls take off.

Where do you think they’ll sleep?

Under A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know

It may have been an oak.

It was, of course, not a willow,

not a pine

or a cypress, 

or a towering beech tree, 

etc. etc.

Need I also say

it wasn’t a date palm?

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Under this tree

the sparrows and me.

Above this tree

the sparrows and me.

Clear sky makes the leaves translucent

and I can see the leaf above 

through the leaf 

below it. 

O tree flowering with birds,

said the Spaniard, Juan Ramon Jimenez.

I say it in German, in my grim warbling.

I'll sit on under this tree,

tree whose name I don’t know,

tree that does not know me.

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Only the sparrows feel safe with me.