A Summer Evening - Estopped on the Library Steps

I suppose it can be viewed as a somber occasion when a poet announces that he or she has decided to forego future prompts and henceforth to live life averse.  But in truth I feel a certain lightness and freedom.  Now I'm just another ex-poet struggling for recovery, trying to kick myself of the habit of writing free verse.  Eight beats to the line, 12 steps more to try and keep things from getting any worse.

Of course I still have my translation habit to fall back on - a bit like methadone maintenance I suppose.  I can get all the high I need by spending an hour a day with the greater and lesser Tang poets.  But from now on - at least for the foreseeable future - everything I have to say for myself is going to be confined strictly to the purest of prose.

To brush with such a fine touch

When there’s barely enough me

To give the air itself wing

As if my thoughts could be

Directly intuited

By someone on the

Far side of the street

It’s a season of estoppel

The Staples store

On the nearest corner

Has nothing to offer

For the usual poetic means

Too late for call slips

Any hope for autopoiesis 

Tonight will only arrive

By way of my dreams

I’m left with no more than

The posterior view of Patience

(or is it Fortitude) and

The unvarnished truth

That silence bears 

Equal measures of
Devise divine and demise 

A Simple Utterance

Here's a poem I translated yesterday by the poet-monk Jia Dao.  I think this will make a good addition to the collection of Chan poems I'm in the process of assembling for publication under the title The Poetry of Awakening.  As with many of the greatest poems written in this tradition, Jia Dao is writing here about being in a liminal state, and provides us with a poem that hovers between a literal and metaphorical description of the experience of awakening.

In the middle of the night

Not quite myself I rise

To draw water from

Deep inside the well

The forest trees

Are bathed in white

The stars shimmer

In the clear sky

口號

賈島

中夜勿自起

汲此百尺泉

林木含白露

星斗在青天

Some Tough Love from Dogen Zenji

Dogen Zenji was a Japanese Zen master who lived in the 13th century and, among an impressive body of work, wrote verses in Chinese in emulation of the great Chan masters.  This is one of his poems that I translated this morning, which strikes me as a bit harsher in tone than the Chan poetry from the Tang Dynasty that I've been immersed in recently.  The poem highlights one of the central ironies of Zen poetry - notwithstanding Dogen's avowal of non-attachment and setting books, ink and brush aside, yet somehow he has managed to find the means to record his naked reflections for posterity ....

 

For so long sheltered

From the human realm

Without attachments

All books and brushes

Having been cast aside

Even seeing flowers

And hearing birds

Holds scant atraction

Suddenly being found

On the mountaintop

Naked of all talent

久舎人間無愛惜

文章筆硯既抛來

見花聞鳥風情少

乍在山猶愧不才

Poem Written in Master Yi's Meditation Hut (by Meng Hao-ran)

Based on the scant biographical information that's available, I've seen no indication that the Tang poet Meng Hao-ran was himself a practicing Buddhist.  But he does seem to have been a fellow traveler and counted a number of Chan monks and masters among his intimate friends.  So this is a meditation poem of an unusual sort - not a first hand account of the meditation experience but a second hand account of watching someone else meditate.  Think of it as the meditation equivalent of second hand smoke -- a bit of inner peace that wafts by from simply watching someone else who is deep in tranquil contemplation.

Master Yi sits

In silent meditation

Enclosed in a hut

A universe in itself

In the empty forest

Outside the door

A lone peak soars

The pathway descends

Into a deep ravine

Sunset is followed

By a drenching rain

The sky darkens as

The yard falls into gloom

Behold the lotus flower

How it remains unsullied

And then you realize the heart

Also remains pure

宿業師山房待丁大不至

夕陽度西嶺

群壑倏已暝

松月生夜涼

風泉滿清聽

樵人歸欲盡

煙鳥棲初定

之子期宿來

孤琴候蘿徑