Alliance

by Lorine Niedecker

Hunger

        with wonder

Mites wintering

        in rabbits’ ears

Pronuba

        with yucca

Bashō’s

        backwater

moon-pull

        He was full

at the port

        of Tsuruga

From Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works, edited by Jenny Penberthy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, page 270. Tsuruga is a coastal city on the Sea of Japan, north of Kyoto. The poem was from a previously unpublished manuscript, “The Very Veery,” of June 1969. See also “Bashō,” which seems to be a revision of the preceding poem.