Cold Mountain Poems
1.
These days
Men who saw Cold Mountain
In person
Thought him crazy.
Unseemly,
The face apart,
Body in rags & things
Like you shouldn't notice.
What I said
He didn't hear.
What he said
I won't repeat.
Yet
Go on, I tell
Those to come
All ye
Go on
To the Cold Mountain.
2.
Out of clothes? Go find yours.
Don't get a fox to take off his coat.
Wanting food? Pick our own.
Don't trick a goat into providing for you.
To ask for a loan of the pelt
& flesh as well
Is to hold with their sadness & misery,
regrets all around.
The force for good is gone
From the world.
Food & clothing not where they should be.
3.
The poor donkey is short one measure
Of fodder,
The rich dog has three inches of bed straw to spare.
If poverty is not evenly distributed
Wealth and hardship will not meet in the middle.
Just when you begin to provide for the donkey
You make the dogs feel deprived.
Think on this, will you —
It even makes me feel depressed.
4.
Heaven is high, endless.
The earth thick
Thick without end.
Living in between
At the mercy of these powers,
Creatures
Butting heads
For food & warmth,
Eyeing each other's morsels
Would scheme to kill
Heedless
The while.
Why should
A blind child
Wonder about the color of milk?
5.
I saw dogs, by the hundreds
A wild bunch,
Scruffy curs,
The reclining ones happy to lie low
The ones up & about are happy too,
Throw a bone in their midst
& all changes
Everyone begins to growl,
Baring their teeth at each other
Alas, not that there were too few bones
But there were so many dogs
How to share it out?
6.
Pity the mortals
Their feeling habit
Eating at every meal
Never tire
Steamed pork, stir in the garlic paste
Broiled duck
Dip in peppered salt
For a delicate fish broth
Pull out the backbone of a fish
For tenderness
Serve the cheek warm
Its skin on
The bitterness of other things
Others can keep
We get on with
What is sweet
7.
Children, I tell you,
Leave the burning house now
Three carts are at the door,
One to flee the self,
One to save another,
& one more for the way.
Come away,
Children, everyone.
Homeless you shall not be
Abiding by your vehicle.
& if perchance carried alive to
The marketplace
There left to sit empty,
Before
The big sky
You will learn
The ten directions
Have no ups
Nor downs,
Coming or going,
East
Or west, neither
Should prevent you.
8.
People ask the way
To Cold Mountain.
No
Road goes there.
In summer
The ice
Will not shift.
In daylight
Mist
Is all one sees
& how did you
Get there?
How did I?
But your heart is hardly
Like mine,
When it is
There is here.
_________________________
In the Same Light
200 Poems for Our Century
translated by Wong May
The Song Cave, 2022
