Overnight At A Buddhist
Mountain Temple
Massed peaks pierce
the cold-colored sky;
a view the zazen hall
faces.
Shooting stars pass
into sparse-branched trees;
the moon one way,
clouds another.
Few people come
to this mountaintop;
cranes do not flock
in the tall pines.
One Buddhist priest,
eighty years old,
has never heard
of the world affairs.
______________________
Chia Tao (779-843)
Colors of Daybreak and Dusk
Tangram
1995
