I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

For instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink, we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters. “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how…

Before dusk on the lake, the moon just full,
The fisherman from Pa-ling chants incessantly his boatman’s songs.
Fishing gear,
A boat with an up-turned bow,
To be happy in wind and waves one need not be a saint.

translated by Hellmut Wilhelm

Wild geese trail cold shrieks
and pass beyond the mountain walls.
I awake from a lonely dream of you;
my window is lit by the autumn moon.

translated by Kim Jong-gil

Heaven has never been generous to the old fisherman
and seldom sent fair weather to the rivers and lakes.
Don’t laugh, old fisherman, at the rough human world:
you chose to put yourself among eddies and rapids.

translated by Kim Jong-gil

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.

translated by Coleman Barks & John Moyne