“The earth is too wide” - Al-Shanfara (translation)

The earth is too wide

for a free man

to put up with humiliation

      or hatred.

“I should not have waited.” - Lady Akazome Emon (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

I should not have waited.

It would have been better

To have slept and dreamed,

Than to have watched night pass,

And this slow moon sink.

The Clothes Pin - Jane Kenyon

How much better it is

to carry wood to the fire

than to moan about your life.

How much better

to throw the garbage

onto the compost, or to pin the clean

sheet on the line

with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!