Today, my office is chilly.
At once, I miss my mountain chum,
Who bound firewood in the valley,
Bringing it back to boil white stones.
I wish I could ladle some wine
To comfort on this stormy night.
But fallen leaves fill mountain hollows,
How could I find a track to follow?
This is poem #29 from the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首], entitled 寄全椒山中道士. The original poem in Simplified Chinese is:
今朝郡斋冷， 忽念山中客；
涧底束荆薪， 归来煮白石。
欲持一瓢酒， 远慰风雨夕。
落叶满空山， 何处寻行迹？
trunk ringed by fallen blooms,
only the pate contains hangers-on.
bright-fringed clouds
with blackened bellies drift:
summer day sundown.
A precept-breaking monk for eighty years --
still, I'm ashamed of Zen that ignores cause and effect.
Sickness is the result of past karma.
Now how can I honor my endless connections?
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 126.
Autumn moon first glimpse
is impossibly huge;
the next, it shrank!
Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
the temple might stand
a thousand years ago,
but for that city.
boats float the river;
balloons through the sky.
i float through time.
So set its Sun in Thee
What Day be dark to me —
What Distance — far —
So I the Ships may see
That touch — how seldomly —
Thy Shore?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 