“Truth,” said a traveller,
“Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
“Often have I been to it,
“Even to its highest tower,
“From whence the world looks black.”
“Truth,” said a traveller,
“Is a breath, a wind,
“A shadow, a phantom;
“Long have I pursued it,
“But never have I touched
“The hem of its garment.”
And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.
ripples dance
on a flooded paddy
as rain starts, slowly.
perched magpie
stares into the distance.
gen z? perhaps.
Sleet and rain, as if the pot were boiling.
Winds whack like the crack of an axe.
An old man, an old man,
At sunset, crept into my hut.
He sighed. He sighed as if to himself,
"These rulers, so cruel. Why, tell me
Why they must steal till we starve,
Then slice the skin from our bones?
For a song from some beauty,
They'll go back on sworn words;
For a song from some tart,
They'll tear down our huts;
For a sweet song or two,
They'll slaughter ten thousand like me,
Like you. Weep as you will,
Let your hair turn white,
Let your whole clan go hungry...
No good wind will blow,
No gentle breeze
Begin again.
Lord Locust Plague and Baron Bandit Bug,
One east, one west, one north, one south.
We're surrounded.
NOTE: This the J.P. Seaton translation found in The Poetry of Zen (2004); Shambhala Publications: Boston, MA, pp. 67-68. For the author’s name, Seaton uses “Kuan Hsiu,” the Wade-Giles romanization of the name.
temple yard:
silent in mid-day sun,
butterflies flutter through.
To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
Ease me, a little ease, my song!
By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.
Public beach:
10am on a Tuesday.
It's peaceful --
Peaceful in a depressing
Sort of way.
It's desolate.
There are gulls and crabs,
But not a human in sight.
It's like the scene in which
A solitary survivor --
Having endured
Disease,
Starvation,
Outlaws,
&
Zombies
While crossing the
Continent on foot --
Realizes he has reached
The end of the line, &
The rumored sanctuary
Does not exist...
But at least the view is nice,
And -- for the moment --
It's Zombie free.
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel,
Or on the beaches,
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;
And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration,
In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whatever lives must meet its end --
That is the way it has always been.
If Taoist immortals were once alive,
Where are they today?
The old man who gave me wine
Claimed it was the wine of the immortals.
One small cup and a thousand worries vanish;
Two, and you'll even forget about heaven.
But is heaven really so far away?
It is best to trust in the Tao.
A crane in the clouds has magic wings
To cross the earth in a moment.
It's been forty years of struggle
Since I first became reclusive.
Now that my body is nearly dead,
My heart is pure. What more is there to say?
NOTE: This is the translation of Sam Hamill found in The Poetry of Zen (2004); Shambhala Publications: Boston, MA, p.24.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 