(1851–1912)
Facing Snow and Writing What My Heart Embraces
AT Mount Ssu-ming
in the cold in the snow,
half a lifetime’s bitter chanting.
Beard hairs are easy to pluck out
one by one:
a poem’s words are hard
to put together.
Pure vanity
to vent the heart and spleen;
words and theories, sometimes, aren’t enough.
Loneliness, loneliness
my everyday affair.
The soughing winds
pass on the night bell sound.
[J.P.S.]
Night Sitting
THE hermit doesn’t sleep at night:
in love with the blue of the vacant moon
The cool of the breeze
that rustles the trees
rustles him too.
[J.P.S.]
Returning Clouds
MISTY trees hide in crinkled hills’ blue green.
The man of the Way’s stayed long
at this cottage in the bamboo grove.
White clouds too know the flavor
of this mountain life;
they haven’t waited for the vesper bell
to come on home again.
[J.P.S.]
Moored at Maple Bridge
FROST white across the river,
waters reaching toward the sky.
All I’d hoped for’s lost
in autumn’s darkening.
I cannot sleep, a man
adrift, a thousand miles
alone, among the reed flowers:
but the moonlight fills the boat.
[J.P.S.]
Laughing at Myself (1)
COLD cliff, dead tree,
this knobby-pated me . . .
think there’s nothing better than a poem.
I mock myself, writing in the dust, and
damn the man who penned the first word
and steered so many astray.
[J.P.S.]
Laughing at Myself (2)
SLICES of flesh made burnt offerings
to the Buddha.
Just so, I came to know myself,
a ball of mud dissolving in the water.
I had ten fingers. Now, just eight remain.
Did I really think I could become a Buddha
one slice at a time?
[J.P.S.]