Splendid thoughts arise from joined words --
Lucidity is awakened:
Luminous like adorned brocade,
Doleful as a string serenade.
But if crib suspicions aren't killed,
It'll be just one more pulp piece.
Though you may be these word's weaver--
Some ancestor, the prime conceiver.
You must be just and rise above,
Though it kills words you've grown to love.
The original lines in Simplified Chinese:
或藻思绮合，清丽千眠。
炳若缛绣，凄若繁弦。
必所拟之不殊，乃暗合乎曩篇。
虽杼轴于予怀，怵佗人之我先。
苟伤廉而愆义，亦虽爱而必捐。
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.
There was a young man from Busan --
'Twas up the hillside he lived on
That - pressed for time -
He bought a zipline,
But got stuck, dangling above Busan.
mountain forest trail:
cherubic figurine
cheers weary hikers.
I walk the narrow path,
Clogs divoting the moss.
White clouds over the shore;
Gate obscured by Spring grass.
Post-rain, I see the pines,
Follow stream to its source.
Flower-mind, then Zen Mind --
Arrived! Words have no force.
This is poem #136 of the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首.] The original in Simplified Chinese goes:
一路经行处， 莓苔见屐痕。
白云依静渚， 春草闭闲门。
过雨看松色， 随山到水源。
溪花与禅意， 相对亦忘言。
sidewalk amblers
pass within inches
of unruffled magpie.
Who knows this or that?
Hark in the wall to the rat:
Since the world was, he has gnawed;
Of his wisdom, of his fraud
What dost thou know?
In the wretched little beast
Is life and heart,
Child and parent,
Not without relation
To fruitful field and sun and moon.
What art thou? His wicked eye
Is cruel to thy cruelty.
Summer night:
bell pavilion - silent,
but for cricket chirp.
You came to my door in the dawn and sang;
it angered me to be awakened from sleep,
and you went away unheeded.
You came in the noon and asked for water;
it vexed me in my work,
and you were sent away with reproaches.
You came in the evening with your flaming torches.
You seemed to me like a terror and I shut my door.
Now in the midnight I sit alone in my lampless room
and call you back whom I turned away in insult.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 