A Passing Wave

Who stops to mourn the passing wave?
I have traveled far just to see the shore.
Now the tide fails beyond my reach
At the sight of sunset my heart breaks.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Chrysanthemums

Long did I mourn the death of chrysanthemums
Till my mouth grew fond of the taste.
The more I vow to harm only myself
The more I escape into the hurt of others.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Prose by any other name

Since I'm entirely incapable of resisting a challenge like this:

The Iliac
Homer's epic poem about his pelvis.

O Hello
Well met in Cyprus

The Canterbury Ales
Straight, no Chaucer

Deowulf
Long-lasting protection

McBeth
The bloodiest burger of them all

Midsummer Night's Ream
Printing documents at the last minute

Sensex and Sensibility
The intuitive way to play the stock market

Sensei and Sensibility
The True Story of Jane Austen's Japanese Lover

The Origin of the Spicies
The Evolution of Indian and Mexican food

Homeo and Juliet
The Capulet Guide to Alternate Medicine

Song of My Shelf
Whitman's book collection

Sub Liners
Wrapping sandwiches the Irish way

Olive Twist
Please, bartender, can I have some more martinis?

Bing and Nothingness
Existential Search

Bleak Hose
Underwear in the Victorian age

Oedipus T. Rex
Incest in the Jurassic age

Far from the Madding Crow
Critical Essays on Poe's Raven

Abslalom! Abslalom!
Winter Sports in Yoknapatawpha County

Clitemnestra
Finding happiness while your man's away at war

Rabbi, Run
Jewish anxiety in the suburbs

Trackstatus Logico-Philosophicus
The contents are everything that's in the Fed-Ex case

Wealth of Notions
Some ideas about the Economy

Dude the Obscure
The Lesser Known Lebowski

For the Union Dad
What to do when your wife's in Labor.

Jane Byre
What does he see in that stupid cow?

The Grapes of Wraith
The Vineyards of Angmar

Bardot Thodol
The Tibetan Book of Hot French Actresses

Get Anjali
How to score with the girl next door

The Weaves
Threads of Consciousness

Rumayana
The Holy Book of Old Monks

Update (a few more):

Sorrows of Young Weather
The Stormy Passions of Youth

Lorna Dune
Romance on Arrakis

The Dino Elegies
Every raptor is terrifying

The Cattle
Josef K. Cowboy

Rime of the Ancient Marinara
Pasta, pasta everywhere

King Solomon's Mine
Confessions of the Queen of Sheba

The Odds
Horace, Bookmaker

Ajar
The insanity of leaving doors open

Prancing Horses

Others have praised the hundred horses
Dancing as one in the public square
Sweeter to me is the leap of a deer
Escaping, on impulse, he knows not what.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Autumn

No more flowers
And the bells of the village
Hang silent in the wind.

I fill my desk
With blank pages, refusing
To light a fire.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

My Silence

The highest mountain gathers the most snow
The deepest river flows most slowly.
I have thought about these words so long
I cannot tell my shadow from silence.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Last Raindrop

How long it took to gather
The strength to fall
One brief moment of radiance
And a touch you hardly feel.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Storm

Birds singing into the wind
Too drenched to fly
A thousand fingers of rain
Pressed to your window.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Spring

Rainbows shimmer and die
On the dragonfly's wing.
My heart is too fragile
For the colors you bring.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

A Conversation

Drinking together, just the one cup between us,
The wine soon tasted of both our mouths,
Back and forth so often I could not tell
If the wine made me drunk, or your words.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Spring Sickness

Like one who, recovering from sickness, feels
His fever returning with each new ache
I stop to stare at each new flower, imagining
The Spring is a symptom of you.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

My Master's Horses

Praise to my master whose horses run
As swiftly now as when they were wild!
Running so swift over long distances
Carrying the weary weight of a man.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Untraced Thoughts

Moonlight through a cobweb
Makes a perfect shadow.
I wish that I could trace
My feelings into words.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The caterpillar on the leaf

In the season of
Butterflies no one mourns the
Lost caterpillars.

The Burst Plums

Unheard the ripened plums
Fell to the earth last night.
I must wash away these stains
Before my mistress wakes.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Pessimism's Ghost

It takes a particular kind of despair
To see the glass half emptied of air.

Night and Day

Proudly the sun sets!
To the bird flying home
The cry of her fledglings
Seems like a song.

Shyly the moon rises!
To the lover in the woods
The song of the nightingale
Sounds like weeping.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Echo

I stand on the mountain
And the valley calls out to me
My voice when I shout
Echoing its loneliness.

- Hu Ming-Xiang