Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life.
translated by Robert Bly
poetry
Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis by Philip Whalen
I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin
of a quick splashed picture–bug, leaf,
cariacature of Teacher–
on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it.
Their world and several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it–
Cheered as it whizzed by–
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.
Note: spelling is Whalen’s own
from Why Mira Can’t Go Back To Her Old House by Mirabai
. . .My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries.
I don’t steal money, I don’t hit anyone. What will you charge me with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders; and now
you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.
translated by Robert Bly
The soul, like the moon by Lalla (Lalleshwari)
The soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again.
And I have seen the ocean
continuously creating.
Since I scoured my mind
and my body, I, too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.
My teacher told me one thing,
Live in the soul.
When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.
translated by Coleman Barks
The Jar with the Dry Rim by Rumi
The mind is an ocean. . .and so many worlds
Are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!
And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating
On the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink. . .
Not even one bubble will show where it went down.
The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!
But reach for it. . .Don’t be a jar
Full of water, whose rim is always dry.
Don’t be the rider who gallops all night
And never sees the horse that is beneath him.
translated by Robert Bly
untitled poem by Lady Izumi Shikibu
I go out of the darkness
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.
Kuraki yori
Kuraki michi ni zo
Itinu beki
Haruka ni terase
Yama no hi no tsuki
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Lady Akazome Emon
I should not have waited.
It would have been better
To have slept and dreamed,
Than to have watched night pass,
And this slow moon sink.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Autumn Spring by Hsüeh T’ao
The cold hue newly clears, a belt of haze;
The mysterious sound gurgles afar, the ten-stringed lute.
Endlessly to my pillow they come, to draw thoughts of love,
Not letting this pensive soul half the night to sleep.
translated by Eric W. Johnson
Farewell to a Friend by Hsüeh T’ao
The water country’s reeds and rushes, night, covered with frost;
The moon’s coldness, the mountains’ cast share a bleak, pale blue.
Who can say, from this night on, a thousand li away,
My dreams of you, dim as the distant frontier?
translated by Eric W. Johnson
from Feng-ya Song by Tu Fu
How long before I’ve grown feathers and wings
and settled beside you at the end of flight?
translated by David Hinton
Leonard Durso 