drafty mountain hut

always at home, forever on the way

Tag: Chinese Poetry

December 3, 2017

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

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November 28, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 Week 11

by tendo zenji

In reply to a Letter from Meng, Who’s
Gone Searching for His Old Village

After all that loss and ruin, I live at peace
far from Lo–yang summits, still unraveling

This question cloud-hidden peaks all pose.
I never leave these thorn-bramble depths—

north winds yellow leaves tumbling away,
southern streams old-age laments. Ten years

a guest of lakes and rivers — this mind all
lingering dusk grows boundless, boundless.

—Tu Fu (712-770)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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November 19, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 10

by tendo zenji

Reverence-Pavilion Mountain, Sitting Alone

The birds have vanished into deep skies.
A last cloud drifts away, all idleness.

Inexhaustible, this mountain and I
gaze at each, it alone remaining.

— Li Po (701-762)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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November 12, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 9

by tendo zenji

Listening to a Monk’s Ch’in Depths

Carrying a ch’in cased in green silk, a monk
descended from Eyebrow Mountain in the West.

When he plays, even in a first few notes,
I hear the pines of ten thousand valleys,

and streams rinse my wanderer’s heart clean.
Echoes linger among temple frost-fall bells,

night coming unnoticed in emerald mountains,
autumn clouds banked up, gone dark and deep.

— Li Po (701-762)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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November 9, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 8

by tendo zenji

Escaping Trouble

A white-haired old man in my fifties
I’ve fled north and south away from trouble
this feeble body wrapped in thin clothing
always on the move and never warm
beset by illness and failing health
the world all mud and ashes
for ten thousand miles on Earth or in Heaven
I haven’t found a place I belong
my wife and children are still with me
whenever I see them I sigh
my hometown is a wasteland of weeds
all my neighbors have scattered
I don’t see a road leading back
I’ve cried out my eyes on Hsiang.

— Tu Fu
translated by Bill Porter (Red Pine) in Finding Them Gone

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October 29, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 7

by tendo zenji

5 Deer Park

No one seen. In empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, no more.

Entering those deep woods, late sun-
light ablaze on green moss, rising.

6 Magnolia Park

Autumn mountains, gathering last light,
one bird follows another in flight away.

Shifting kingfisher-greens flash radiant
scatters. Evening mists: nowhere they are.

11 Vagary Lake

Flute-song carries beyond further shores.
In dusk light, I bid you a sage’s farewell.

Across this lake, in the turn of a head,
mountain greens furl into white clouds.

— Wang Wei (701-761)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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October 22, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 Week 6

by tendo zenji

Autumn night, setting moon

Poised low in emptiness, a radiant moon
glistens incandescent in a drop of dew.

Trying to settle in, magpies startle away.
Fireflies float through open blinds, cold

shadow sparse in courtyard scholar-trees.
Fulling-stick rhythms tighten next door.

How will we ever meet in a land so vast?
Lingering out emptiness, I gaze and gaze.

-Meng Hao-jan (689-740)
translated by David Hinton in The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-jan

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October 15, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 5

by tendo zenji

Autumn Begins

Autumn begins unnoticed. Nights slowly lengthen,
and little by little, clear winds turn colder and colder,

summer’s blaze giving way. My thatch hut grows still.
At the bottom stair, in bunchgrass, lit dew shimmers

Meng Hao-jan (689-740)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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October 8, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 Week 4

by tendo zenji

Climbing Green-Cliff Mountain in Yung-Chia

Taking a little food, a light walking-stick,
I wander up to my home in quiet mystery

the path along streams winding far away
onto ridgetops, no end to this wonder at

slow waters silent in their frozen beauty
and bamboo glistening at heart with frost,

cascades scattering a confusion of spray
and broad forests crowding distant cliffs.

Thinking it’s moonrise I see in the west
and sunset I’m watching blaze in the east,

I hike on until dark, then linger out night
sheltered away in deep expanses of shadow.

Immune to high importance: that’s renown.
Walk humbly and it’s all promise in beauty,

for in quiet mystery the way runs smooth,
ascending remote heights beyond compare.

utter tranquility, the distinction between
yes this and no that lost, I embrace primal

unity, thought and silence woven together,
that deep healing where we venture forth.

-Hsieh Ling-yün
translated by David Hinton
in The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-yün

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September 24, 2017

Autumn Kessei 2017 week 2

by tendo zenji

Dwelling in the Mountains 12

Far off to the south are
peaks like Pine-Needle and Nest Hen,
Halcyon-Knoll and Brimmed-Stone,

Harrow and Spire Ridges faces together,
Elder and Eye-Loft cleaving summits.

When you go deep, following a winding river to its source,
you’re soon bewildered, wandering a place beyond knowing:

cragged peaks towering above stay lost in confusions of mist,
and depths sunken away far below surge and swell in a blur.

—Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433)
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

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