Autumn kessei 2017 Week 12

by tendo zenji

Getting Up Past Midnight and Gazing Across the West Garden,
I Encounter the Rising Moon

Waking to the sound of heavy dew falling,
I open the door, gaze past the west garden

to a cold moon rising over eastern ridges,
scattered bamboo, roots gone clear, clear.

Distance clarifies a waterfall into silence.
Now and then, a mountain bird calls out.

I lean on a column, stay till dawn in these
isolate depths of quiet: no words, no words.

— Liu Tsung-yüan (773–819)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home