The monk’s entire body is present in this great circle. Xutang’s true face and eye emerge from it. The blind singer’s love song delights flowers for ten thousand springs.
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in Essential Zen (1994) HarperSanFrancisco.
When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown, And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours; Not the upland clover bloom; But the rowen mixed with weeds, Tangled tufts from marsh and meads, Where the poppy drops its seeds In the silence and the gloom.
Only the Blessed of Lethe's dews May stoop to drink. And yet, Were their Elysium mine to lose, Could I, sans all repining, choose Life's sorrows to forget?
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set today a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837
What was her blondness like? I can't recall, But I do know the blondness of the fields, When the wheat fields' grain ripen in the Fall, And in this blondness her presence I feel.
What were her blue eyes like, I can't recall, But I do know the blueness of the sky, September morn, or later in the Fall, And then again I do feel her nearby.
What was her silky voice like? Can't remember, But in springtime, when fields begin to sigh, I feel that Anna's voice is calling, tender, From a past Spring that's as far as the sky.
Translation by Frank Veszely in: Hungarian Poetry: One Thousand Years. 2023. Manitoba, CA: Friesen Press.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 