A Poem by Dōgen for the New Year

 This is one of Dōgen's Chinese poems which he wrote about celebrating New Year in the mountain retreat of Eiheiji Temple where he lived in his later years.

Living in a Mountain Retreat

Three hundred shards of empty sky

Is more than enough to buy

A single branch of plum blossoms

For the coming New Year

 

Lucky to be on a cloudy peak

The moon above

The cold valley below

Feeling spring’s warmth deep within

Also brings joy and laughter

虚空三百有餘枚　   
買得一枝窮臘梅       

巖頂瑞雲寒谷月　   
含春温至笑咍咍  

Drinking Alone to Finish a Poem. (Du Fu)

Here’s a Du Fu poem about the highs and lows of the creative process. First comes the exhilaration of writing a new poem, with help from a bottle of wine, followed almost immediately by sense of dejection upon completion.  How fleeting creative joy can be, especially when it has been induced by alcohol or other intoxicants.  

Drinking Alone to Finish a Poem

The lamplight shimmers

A sense of pure joy 

Here with my dear friend

A bottle of fragrant wine  

Tipsy from its company

I’m alive to the mystery

A new poem takes form

Then a clash of arms

Before my eyes

What’s the use

Of scholarly training now 

Hard is the life 

Of a petty magistrate

In this shameful state

Low my head bows

獨酌成詩

燈花何太喜

酒綠正相親

醉裡從為客

詩成覺有神

兵戈猶在眼

儒術豈謀身

苦被微官縛

低頭愧野人

 

A Mind of Winter (Tang Dynasty edition)

  

It’s been a long while since I’ve translated a Tang poem, but lately I’ve felt the need for some spiritual nourishment, which I am almost always able to find by reading classical Chinese poetry.  Where better to look than in the collected works of Du Fu.

This is a poem Du Fu wrote in the late 750s called Facing Snow. 

 

Facing Snow

 

Fighting back tears

For many fresh ghosts

A lonely old man

Reciting his woes

 

A welter of clouds

As darkness descends

Snow swirling swiftly

Dancing in the wind

 

An empty wine bottle

The ladle discarded

Embers in the stove

Give lingering heat

 

Of the world beyond

Nothing but silence

While I sit and fret

Over an empty page

对雪

 

戰哭多新鬼

愁吟獨老翁

 

亂雲低薄暮

急雪舞回風

瓢棄尊無綠

爐存火似紅

 

數州消息斷

愁坐正書空

How do I find spiritual uplift in this otherwise bleak poem?  In part, it lies in the simple pleasure of the deep human connection that it provides – with the snow swirling about, the 1200 years that separate us from this winter scene simply melt away as Du Fu sits right before us at his desk.  The poem serves as an invitation to briefly inhabit his life and world. This is a distinguishing quality of so much great Tang poetry – a vivid sense of the poet’s presence.  

 

And there’s something else about this poem that helps revive my spirits.  It was written in the late 750s, at the height of the An Lushan rebellion, a dark time for Du Fu, as well as for the Chinese people.  The Emperor Xuanzong had recently fled the capital and abdicated the throne.  Food was scarce, famine rampant.  Du Fu was living in semi-captivity, separated from his family, and consumed with anxiety.  And still, despite facing this wall of worries, he managed to write this as well as several dozen other of his very finest poems.

 

So it's a good reminder as we face our own dark times.  It may be winter in America, a season of ice, as Gil Scott-Heron called it. A season of frozen dreams and frozen nightmares. Frozen aspirations and inspirations. Lord knows I've spent far too many hours staring at my own empty pages. It's time to start writing and translating again.        

   

A Few Poems About the Joys of Sleeping in Small Boats

Fisherman Drunk Along the Reed Bank

By Tang Yin  

An oar sticks up  

Amidst the reeds

Tied to it there’s a small boat

 

It’s around midnight

The moon hides behind

The head of the oar

 

The old fisherman

Is dead drunk

Call him but he won’t stir

 

When he finally does get up

His jacket will be

Covered in frost

*****

This scroll with a poem is by the Ming artist/poet Tang Yin.  It is currently part of the collection of the Museum of Metropolitan Art in NYC.  I thought of it recently and decided to translate the poem after coming across another, much shorter poem by the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki.  Shiki takes a very different approach by providing a first hand account about the joy of sleeping in a small boat.  Sorry I don't have the original Japanese text of Shiki's haiku but here is my translation:

Asleep in a boat

I lie side by side with it ...

River of Heaven

 

And I'd like to add my own contribution to this emerging sub-genre about the joys of sleeping in a small boat, which I've written in response to Shiki: 

Asleep in a boat

The waves keep murmuring

About eternity

  

Everybody's Moon (for Adrianna Amari)

It’s everybody's moon

say the long strands of marsh grass

dumbstruck with wonder

 

what if the pathetic fallacy

isn’t a fallacy after all

 

what if the marsh grasses

feel the same way we do

about sunset

 

what if the crickets

are full of longing

for the moon

 

what if

a sympathetic current

runs through the living world

 

don’t try to deny it

I know you feel it too

Song for an October Morning

The Buddha of Nature

Everywhere so abundant

Grasses trees and oceans

Overflowing with life

One pearl without flaw

Half shaded half bright

Intermittently 

Turns out just right

In the luminance of 

An October morning

******

In the 24th Chorus, Kerouac says all great statements ever made abide in death. But I say put all your eloquence to work advancing the interests of life.  Decay itself is more than sufficient to serve such purposes.  Be wary of ocean ferries.  You don't want to end up drowning like some damned Phoenician sailor.  Why all the death fetishism? What's so great about being late or even stuck in time for that matter?

The Meaning of Onement

From moment to moment
A fleeting sense of Onement
Felt just before the Day of Atonement

 

This is a #haiku I wrote today - the day before Yom Kippur, 2025.  I wrote it after learning the origin of atonement, that is of the English word atonement, which is quite different from what I had thought or imagined to be the case. I would have guessed that the word was of classical origin, probably derived from Ecclesiastical Latin, something like atonatus which would have meant to make proper amends …. But that turns out to be not at all the case. 

Atone is a word that's Middle English in origin.  It was derived as a compound word, or a word that was coined by putting together two other pre-existing Middle English words – at and one.  By compounding, to atone meant to be at one or well reconciled.  The first known written usage of atone appears in around 1555 but even prior to that there is a Middle English word onement which conveyed a similar idea – being in the state of onement, meant you would be well reconciled to your neighbors, your community or perhaps to the entire world.  That’s what we seek by atonement after all – to be at onement.  It’s a beautiful and powerful idea.