Issa's cricket [translation by Jane Hirshfield]

On a branch 
floating downriver 
a cricket, singing. 

Come, thief, by Jane Hirshfield

The mandarin silence of windows before their view,
like guards who nod to every visitor,
"Pass."
"Come, thief,"
the path to the doorway agrees.
A fire requires its own conflagration.
As birth does. As love does.
Saying to time to the end, "Dear one, enter."