If Bookshelves Groan If bookshelves groan It must be with pleasure - Imagine being weighed down By beauty and truth in print - Let us pray Buckled by Joyce and Prévert Testing the strength of your muscles - What delicious agony Strain my tendons, Petrarch With all your mental Laura lust. After all It is what one carries that counts. Paris, November 14, 1987 These Haiku-like poems and longer verses represent nighttime thoughts and inspirations written down while reading Sam Hamill's translations in The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bash¿, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets. Some of them are actually based on the work of these poets, but most are simply inspired by them. Others come from the author's own musings.