(8TH CENTURY)
1
PIGS eat the flesh of dead men.
Men dine on dead pigs.
Pigs don’t mind the stink of man.
But if a pig just dies, people throw it in the water.
And if a man dies, he’s buried out of sight.
Then they lose interest in each other.
Yet the Buddha’s lotus is born in boiling water.
[J.P.S./S.H.]
2
I STAND here and watch the people of this world:
all against one and one against all,
angry, arguing, plotting and scheming.
Then one day, suddenly, they die.
And each gets one plot of ground:
four feet wide, six feet long.
If you can scheme your way out of that plot,
I’ll set the stone that immortalizes your name.
[J.P.S.]
3
HUMAN beings live in the dirt,
like bugs in a filthy bowl.
All day long crawling around and around,
never getting over the edge.
Even spiritual masters can’t make it,
wracking their brains for schemes and plans.
The months and the years, a running river:
Then there’s the day you wake up old.
[J.P.S.]
4
PARROTS live in the western lands.
Forest hunters net them and bring them here.
Courtesans love to play with them, and so
they are well known at court, in and out all day.
They’re given golden cages to dwell in,
but bolted in, their robes of plumes are ruined.
Better a swan, or a crane . . . riding the winds
high up, well known to the clouds where they fly.
[J.P.S.]
5
MR. Wang’s degree says Flourishing Talent.
He loves to find fault with my poems.
He says I don’t follow the regulations,
and don’t use the right techniques.
He says I don’t use the four tones correctly,
and just stick in words any which way.
I laugh at what he calls poetry: a blind man’s
rhymes in lukewarm praise of the sun.
[J.P.S.]
6
MY heart’s like the autumn moon,
reflecting from the clear pure waters of the pool.
There’s nothing to compare:
What can I say?
[J.P.S.]
7
THE gorge is long, rocks, and rocks and rocks, jut up,
The torrent’s wide, reeds almost hide the other side.
The moss is slippery even without rain.
The pines sing; the wind is real enough.
Who’s ready to leap free of the world’s traces:
come sit with me among white clouds?
[J.P.S.]
8
EAST of me, the old lady
Got rich three or four years ago.
Used to be poorer than me,
Now she laughs that I don’t have money.
She laughs that I’ve fallen behind.
I laugh that she’s gotten ahead.
Both of us laughing, no stopping us.
East, and West.
[J.P.S.]
9
IDLY, I wander to the flowering peak.
Morning sun: its glory blazing
All around, in sunlit emptiness
White clouds, and cranes, fly.
[J.P.S.]
10
JADE green pool spring water’s clear.
The spirit of itself brings dark mysteries to light.
Meditate on emptiness: it’s all the more quiet.
[J.P.S.]