HANSHAN ~

 

from Cold Mountain Zen

Father and mother having left me much to inherit,

I'm not envious of others' paddies and fields.

My wife handles her loom, clicking, clucking,

my child, playing by herself, mouth babbling, babbling.

She claps her hands, making blossoms dance,

chin in hands, she listens to birds singing.

Who will come by and admire all this?

Just a woodcutter stops by for awhile.

Since birth, for thirty years,

I've walked tens of thousands of li.

Along the rivers blue grass proliferated,

as I entered the borders scarlet dust rose.

I kneaded elixir vainly to seek immortality,

I read books to comment on history.

Having returned to Cold Mountain now,

I lie by a stream and wash my ears.

As I climb the path to Cold Mountain,

the route to Cold Mountain does not end.

The valley is long with piles of stones,

the streams smothered with grass.

The moss is smooth, not because of rain,

the pines sough, not by borrowing winds.

Who would go beyond the world

and sit with me amid white clouds?

I lie beneath heavy layers of rocks;

steamy clouds do not fade during the day.

My room is murky and dark,

but my mind rejects uproar and clatter.

My dreams go to wander in golden palaces,

my soul returns by crossing the stone bridge.

I've thrown away whatever disturbs me,

even the gourd clanking in the trees.

My house sits under green boulders;

the garden is wild but I do not cut grass.

New wisterias hang down, entwiningly;

old stones stand, rising steeply, sharply.

Monkeys pick mountain berries;

in the pond a white heron mouths fish.

The transcendental book, in two volumes,

I read under a tree, mumbling.

_C O L D  M O U N T A I N  Z E N_________________________________

Hanshan

translated by Hiroaki Sato

New Directions 2026

I've waited all my life for Hiroaki Sato to bring us Hanshan —

it was only a matter of time. Excellent footnotes accompany these

poems, so I encourage every reader to find this essential book, a

beauty, and read all the poems, all the footnotes, all the essays,

all the all. I just wanted to type out a few poems to share on a late

summer season evening.

DUO DUO ~

 

Map

Midnight, there are people beyond the window enticing you

Cigarette butts, like silkworms start clambering

On the table, a glass of water also starts to churn

You pull open a drawer, inside are forty years of snow

A voice, someone's voice, asks: Is it true the sky's a map?

You recognize the pitch-black lips of the one who cries out

You recognize him

In fact it's you, it's that old you

You recognize your head

Just as it's coughed out into the distance from a hospital window

On the far horizon, blacksmith and saboteur move together

Those fighting fires squeeze onto a postage stamp

As they madly splash out the ocean

Swimmers in the water are splashing one another

Their swimming trunks are flour sacks

Printed with the words: Saboteurs far from the motherland

A whiff of a pungent odor

You sniff out the earliest news of the storm

Like a cloud, following the butcher's hooks you float out the

butcher's back window

Behind you, there's a leg still sitting on the butcher's block

You recognize it as your very own leg

Since you passed over that step

1990

___________________________

Duo Duo

The Boy Who Catches Wasps

translated by Gregory B. Lee

Zephyr Press, 2002

WANG YIN ~

 

Lover

We have reached the open sea, my love,

the shore lights extinguished

seahorse flutes sweet and lilting

We have reached the open sea

I open the urn

scatter you

little pieces of you

falling more slowly than powder

obliquely onto the water

I scatter all of you

You turn the sea faintly red

You calm the waters

just as when you were alive and

midnight snow's fell upon

our open hands

I give you the sky

give you the sea

I give it all to you     all to you

I take the urn that held you

hold it to my breast

I put myself inside the urn that held you

I am now in your dreams

1987-88

_________________________________

Wang Yin

A Summer Day in the

Company of Ghosts

translated by Andrea Lingenfelter

NYRB 2022

YU XUANJI ( LUCAS KLEIN ) ~

Winter Night, Sent to Wen Tingyun

Pains finding a poem to read you in the lamplight.

I haven't slept all night long — I have this cold quilt.

The courtyard is full of leaves blown off trees by a worried wind

and a sinking sad moon pierces the bed curtain and window scrim.

Dispersed, we have no time to carry out our wishes,

but in every rise and fall we see the mind in its original state.

Without a hidden perch in the paulownias,*

the sparrow circle the grove, vacantly chirping all night.

* Chinese parasol tree

Early Autumn

Tender chrysanthemums hold new colors, and

in the distant mountains dusk mist idles.

A cool wind startles the green trees —

clear rhymes to meld with red strings.

A longing woman, brocade in her loom,

someone trekking through the sky beyond the pass:

wild geese fly, fish are in the water,

and letters, too, get sent along.

The Scene in Late Spring

An impoverished home at the end of the lane. No companions, either,

except for a lover who stays in my dreams.

Waiting fragrances, fine silk? A banquet in some other house,

some other tower the wind is sending sings from.

I was woken this morning by the avenue's clamoring drums

and the chitchat of magpies in the courtyard interrupts my spring

    sorrow.     

How could I keep up with the human realm,

myself? I am an unmoored boat ten thousand miles away.

______________________

Yu Xuanji

Hiding In Caverns Formed

From Old Roots

TRANSLATED BY LUCAS KLEIN

Oxford 2024

MENG HAO-JAN ~

After Visiting Thought-Essence Monastery,

I Return with White-Cloud Wang Following

Somewhere Behind

I left that high valley long before midday,

and twilight was fading when I got home.

Looking up the mountain road, I find only

oxen and sheep.  My gaze grows reverent.

Woodcutters lose each other in darkness,

the evening chill silences a last cricket,

and I still haven't closed my bramble gate.

I keep lingering, expecting you out there.

At the Pavilion on Grand-View Mountain,

Sent to Chang Tzu-jung at Flourish Ridge

On the summit, sudden winds wild,

a cloud sails by like a startled bird.

Standing at the guardrail, I wonder:

is it old Chang coming back home?

Looking for T'eng's Old Recluse Home

Human endeavor's gone in a single morning,

and a recluse's three paths vanish in weeds.

First I hear you're resting at the Chang River,

now you're among T'ai Mountain wandering

dead. There's a pond here still tinged with ink,

but autumn's tumbled out of mountain clouds,

no hidden bones to find. You understood, hid

all beneath heaven inside all beneath heaven.

Visiting the Hermitage of Ch'an Monk Jung

In the mountaintop meditation hut — just a monk's robes.

And outside windows, no one. Birds at the stream take flight.

Yellow dusk stretching half-way down the mountain road,

I hear cascades in love with kingfisher-greens gone dark.

Gathering Firewood

Gathering firewood I enter mountain depths,

mountain depths rising creek beyond creek

choked with the timbers of bridges in ruins.

Vines tumble low, tangled over cragged paths,

and at dusk, scarce people grow scarcer still.

Mountain wind sweeping through simple robes,

my chant steady, I shoulder a light bundle,

watch smoke drift across open country home.

____________________

The Mountain Poems of

Meng Hao-jan

Translated by David Hinton

Archipelago Books, 2018

XI CHUAN ~

Louvre Messages

The palace is always haunted.

The pond does not lack reflections.

   *  *  *

The sea never reflects the sky quietly.

Empty mountains are indifferent to the presence of life and death.

*  *  *

This "moment" refuses to understand time greater than a moment.

Ordinary flowers of the moment form a collective.

*  *  *

Angels without a collective greet each other across generations.

Their remnants stars of a single era.

*  *  *

Don't try so hard, idiot:

The goddess of victory is the goddess of victory even without her                   head.

Putting her arms back on wouldn't make Venus any sweeter.

*  *  *

The gods stare at statues of gods to recognize themselves.

No matter how strong the sunlight is, it needs the help of  lightbulbs.

*  * *

But staring at anything too long

is an intrusion on its past and future lives.

*  *  *

Let your thoughts go wild, idiot:

Angels are angels because when they fly

they can see the dust on the heads of "everything."

                                  August 18, 2023

____________________

Translated from the Chinese by Lucas Klein

from At the Louvre

NYRB, 2024

WEIJIA PAN ~

 

Ultimatum

If I forget one character a day,

I will have forgotten Chinese

by the end of 2042.

Sooner or later I will forget

my quarrel with my father,

I will forget if

I ever wrote to you.

And the new language

I will have acquired

will not be the same

as the one that bit me.

____________________

Motherlands

Weijia Pan

Milkweed Editions

2023

RED PINE MEETS TAO YUANMING ~

 

Drinking Alone During Constant Rain

All lives come to an end

since ancient times it's been so

we hear the names of Song and Qiao

but where are they now

an old friend gave me some wine

he said it would make me immortal

I tried a cup and my cares disappeared

I poured again and forgot about Heaven

how could Heaven be other than here

nothing surpasses accepting what's real

celestial cranes with their magic wings

might reach the world's edge with a flap

since I embraced this truth

I have made it through forty years

my body may have changed long ago

my mind without doubt is still here

________________________

Tao Yuanming

translated by Red Pine

Copper Canyon Press, 2023

THE LIFE OF TU FU ~

 

R E A D   M E

    New Directions, 2024

YU XUANJI ~

 

Notes of Late Spring

Living in a dark alley behind shambled gates,

I have few companions or friends —

my perfect lover boy only stays on in my dreams.

So whose banquet with fine silks

floats out this fragrant incense,

and what pavilion releases such singing to the wind?

Living just beside the street, the noise of martial drums

shocked me out of my morning sleep.

The screech of magpies in my unused yard

churns up the youthful restlessness I feel.

How can I keep chasing such worldly things

when I know this body

is the same as an untied boat?

______________________

Yu Xuanji

Yin Mountain

The immortal poetry of three Daoist women

translated by Peter Levitt & Rebecca Nie

Shambhala, 2022

BILL PORTER VISITS ~

 

B I L L     P O R T E R

LAO YANG, PEE POEMS ~

               

U F O

        

A kite from another world arrives

Bearing another lonely dream

_______________

Lao Yang

Pee Poems

Circumference Books

2016

translations by 

Joshua Edwards

Lynn Xu

XI CHUAN ~

 

Mourning Problems

an ant dies, and no one mourns

a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn't a crested ibis

a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn

a monkey dies, and people pry open its skull

a shark dies, and another shark keeps swimming

a tiger dies, and some people mourning are mourning themselves

a person dies, and some people mourn and some people don't

a person dies, and some people mourn and some even applaud

a generation dies, and the next generation doesn't really mourn

a country dies, most of the time just leaving apocrypha

a country that doesn't leave apocrypha wasn't a real country

if it wasn't a real country, when it dies no one mourns

no one mourns, and the wind blows in vain

rivers flow in vain, washing over rocks in vain

glistening in vain, making vain ripples

the river dies, and it's not for man to mourn

the wind dies, and it's not for man to mourn

the river and wind make their way to the sea together, the sea as vast                 

          as Zhuangzi's sea

the vast sea dies, and you will have to die

the dragon king dies, and you will have to die

the moon doesn't mourn, there's no one on the moon

the stars don't mourn, the stars aren't flesh and blood

                                                                                                               November 11, 2014

__________________

Bloom and Other Poems

translated from the Chinese by Lucas Klein

New Directions, 2022

                 

MIKE O'CONNOR ~

We lost Mike O'Connor out in his naive land

of the Pacific Northwest — but then the Far East

could also be said to be Mike's native place as well —

sometime this month. I was just receiving the news

from a mutual friend who also sent to me this photograph

of Mike titled "Mike/Old Growth" when we got slammed

up and down in Vermont with a heavy wet snowfall and

all power went bye-bye for a day and night so there

was no access to nothing except the snowmelt pools

I found to fill us up 15 gallons of water for bathing and

dishes, something Mike would well understand.

Mike's book of poems The Rainshadow remains one

of my standby classics — built, indeed, out of old growth.

How do you not fall for a guy who looks

like this guy in this photograph? 

[ BA ]

 

RE-READING WANG WEI ~

Living in the Hills




In calm loneliness I shut my door

Against the whole afterglowing sky

Cranes are nesting in all the pines

No visitors at my wicket gate

Tender bamboos with the new bloom on them

Red lotuses shed of ther old garments

A lamp shines out at the ford

Water-chestnut pickers come home.







Drifting on the Lake



The autumn sky is clear into the distance

The clearer so far from human habitation

On a sandy shore a crane, or beyond clouds

A mountain top makes my content

The limpid ripples calm and evening comes

The moon shines out and I relax

Tonight my single oar takes over

As I drift without thought of going back.







Return to Mount Sung



The river ran clear between luxuriant banks

And my carriage jogged along on its way

And the water seemed to flow with a purpose

And in the evening the birds went back together—

Desolate town confronting an old ford

Setting sun filling the autumn hills

After a long journey, sat the foot of Mount Sung

I have come home and shut my door.






Written in my Country Garden in Spring



On my roof spring pigeons call

And round the village almond trees bloom white

Men take axes to cut the high branches

Shoulder hoes to inspect the conduits

Returning swallows know their old nests

The old resident scans the new calendar

About to drink I suddenly hold my hand

With a pang for a friend on a far journey



____________________
Wang Wei (A.D. 699-761)
Poems
translated by G.W. Robinson
Penguin 1973






I'm always reading Wang Wei

LIN HE-JING ~

Living
As A Recluse
On The Lake


Lakewater

Comes into the yard.

Mountains

Wind round my hut.

A recluse

Should avoid the world.



Normally shut,

The unused door's turned blue with moss.

Guests arrive,

Frightening white birds to flight.

Selling herbs,

I almost hate to price them,

Love watering the garden

According to nature.



And how about

India Road

Through the woods,

Still reaching deep autumn

In a distant,

Blue dream?


________________
Lin He-Jing
Recluse-Poet of Orphan Mountain
Brooding Heron Press 1993
translated by Paul Hansen

MIKE O'CONNOR (TRANSLATOR) ~

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

LIU TSUNG-YUAN ~

R E A D      M E

Miscellany Presented In Reply To

Scholar Lou About To Leave For Huainan

I was sent far away to enjoy life alone

who would have guessed I would meet an old friend

taking pity on broken wings with kind words

soothing ragged fins with life-saving water

our feelings as colleagues haven't changed

but the joys of companionship are new

wandering without a goal wasting time

immune to the pains of spring dancing drunk

even if the pleasures of wind and moon have ceased

the stars and frost we've shared has brought us closer

treating fame as a calamity

we chose the Tao for our neighbor

our schemes were roof tiles in a storm

our suspicions simply misperceptions

wearing an official's hat I still write poems

despite your poverty you still carry a sword

suddenly our parting is today

this happy time won't come again

what is it that's dragging you off

my spirit is leaving with you on the river

I'll have to console my shadow on this side of Heaven

what can I do on that stream to the west

what can I do alone but go fishing

_________________

Liu Tsung-Yuan
translated by Red Pine
Written in Exile
Copper Canyon Books

COLD MOUNTAIN ~

RED PINE (BILL PORTER) ~