(1758–1831)
I KNOW a gentleman poet
who writes in the high old way—
master of form from Han and Wei
or new-style modeled on the T’ang.
With elegant strokes, he quietly composes,
deftly adding images to startle.
But he hasn’t learned to speak from the heart:
all wasted! Though he writes all night long.
[S.H.]
WHO says my poems are poems?
They aren’t poems at all.
Only when you understand my poems aren’t poems
can we talk poetry.
[S.H.]
IN my hut, I keep Han Shan’s Poems.
They’re better than any sutra.
I copy out his poems and pin them up
and recite them again and again.
[S.H.]
NO bird above these wild hills.
Garden leaves fall one by one.
Desolate autumn winds.
A man alone in thin black robes.
[S.H.]
(Poem in Four Characters)
ABOVE heaven
big winds
[S.H.]
NOTHING satisfies some appetites,
but wild plants ease my hunger.
Free of untoward desires,
all things bring me pleasure.
Tattered robes warm frozen bones.
I wander with deer for companions.
I sing to myself like a crazy man
and children sing along.
[S.H.]
I NEVER longed for the wilder side of life.
Rivers and mountains were my friends.
Clouds consumed my shadow where I roamed,
and birds pass high above my resting place.
Straw sandals in snowy villages,
a walking stick in spring,
I sought a timeless truth: the flowers’ glory
is just another form of dust.
[S.H.]
YOU stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger’s blind unless the moon is shining.
One moon, one careless finger pointing—
are these two things or one?
The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.
Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger—nothing there at all.
[S.H.]
AS a boy, I studied literature
but failed to become a scholar.
I sat for years in zazen,
but failed my Dharma Master.
Now I inhabit a hut
inside a Shinto shrine:
half common custodian,
half devotee of the Buddha.
[S.H.]
SIXTY years a poor recluse alone
in a hut near a cliffside shrine.
Night rains fall and carve the cliff.
On my sill, my candle sputters in the wind.
[S.H.]
THE winds have died, but flowers go on falling;
birds call, but silence penetrates each song.
The Mystery! Unknowable, unlearnable.
The virtue of Kannon.
[S.H.]