The feeling of separation, what is there to say
But that the heart is an endless river of stars.
translated by William R. Schultz
Month: September 2018
About Geese by Li Shang-yin
Asleep on the sand, dozing on the water, they form a flock.
Jagged shoreline, fading light, clouds over distant bank.
They don’t know in their heart the plight of the peacock:
The female fettered, forever apart from the male
translated by Eugene Eoyang & Irving Y. Lo
ah sunshine
ah sunshine
my arms ache
for your warmth
come fill me
sunshine
I am open
waiting for you
A Fisherman by Song Kan
Mountains rise over mountains and smoke from valleys;
the dust of the world can never touch the white gulls.
The old fisherman is by no means disinterested;
he owns, in his boat, the moon over the west river.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
Written on a Volume by a Friend by Yi Sack
The path runs aslant, deep among the jumbled mountains,
at sundown, cattle find their way home on their own.
This is indeed the wish of an old man come true:
sweet grass, faintly misted, reaches to the sky.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
The Moon in the Jar by Yi Kyu-bo
A monk coveted the moon in the well
and fished it up with water into a jar.
But back at the temple, he will find
when the jar tilts, the moon spills.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
To the Moon by Song Ik-pil
When on the wane, you are always impatient to wax,
but how do you so easily wane after waxing?
You are full only once in a month’s thirty nights:
man’s mind in a lifetime is exactly the same.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
“That is quite a statement to the women of this country.”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“It is worth pondering… 2 of the 9 justices of the US Supreme Court will have been credibly accused of serious sexual misconduct and confirmed anyway. That is quite a statement to the women of this country.”
Susan Hennessey, twitter feed, September 16, 2018.
Lawfare Executive Editor, Brookings Fellow, CNN National Security and Legal Analyst, Former IC attorney.
River by Güngör Tekçe
A meadow
And a river
There was someone
I forget
Through the
River straight towards me
Surging steadily onward
My feet planted on the earth
I was soon overwhelmed
Was it a thousand years ago
Or was it only yesterday
So many dead
Who’d grasped at deadwood and at dregs
Was it a Monday or was it a Wednesday
Whirled and swirled into the depths
So many loves
So many oaths
Washed clean and clear
Was it ten o’clock or was it twelve
With shriek upon shriek the waterfowl
Had bound the drawstrings of the night
They were basking in the sun
A summer with mascara smeared
Releasing a breath through a reed on the shore
Who was it stepping through the passing waters
Ws it I
Was there someone else
I forget
translated by Jean Carpenter Efe
following a thought of Su T’ung-p’o: this flower
this flower enchants
yet it too will fade
to crumble to dust
although gone
from this world
not from my mind
my heart
there remaining as beautiful
as before
Leonard Durso 