During thirty years since my birth
I've hiked thousands of miles,
seen green grass converging with a river
and red dust rising at the frontiers,
searched in vain for immortals and elixirs,
studying books and histories.
Today I've returned to Cold Mountain.
I lie back in a stream, washing out my ears.
Translation: Barnstone, Tony and Ping, Chou. 2005. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary. New York: Anchor Books.
A loose shard of thought
Flips and twists about in
My brain,
Poking sensitive tissue,
And sending firestorms
Riffling through my circuitry.
I can't really say I feel each
Prickle or pierce, but they
Do make me wince, sometimes.
How do I roll like a
feather in flow?
The one that can't be
pulled from the pool.
It slips around the
lifted hand,
Retreating back into
the water that it never
really left.
It's like sleight of hand
one plays upon oneself:
at once magician & mark.
The faster one snatches at it,
the greater the miss.
The slower one moves,
the more frustratingly
one sees one's failure.
How to roll like a feather in flow?
They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another.
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.
Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-colored night.
She cannot light the city;
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.
I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.
Heavy Indian Club movement patterns and the core tenets of Perennial Philosophy.
the turning leaves
catch the morning sunlight
to show depths of red.
heavy-headed grass sways:
the clockwork counting down
the days of Autumn.
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time,
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall tomorrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
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