Short Poems

When I questioned your pupil, under a pine-tree,
“My teacher,” he answered, “went for herbs,
But toward which corner of the mountain,
How can I tell, through all these clouds?”

As midnight veils and hides in shade
This vast and domed saloon
As all those clouds in piles arrayed
Have screened the unsullied moon

So thou my Lord hast been to me
A cloud that darkened life——

AM AGDALEN , the scarlet Day,
Knocked at Eve's convent bars;
Comes Twilight, penitent in gray,
Telling her beads, the stars.

“Who is there
to attain What?”

the master of Ch'an
the medium of the ocean

The one name is the giver of happiness: the second all pollution.
O Soul, if thou choosest goodness, then meditate upon Rama's Name.
Father, mother, son and wife, servants, gardens, wealth and palaces.
They have naught of truth in them, know them false, mere dreams of night.
All perverse and cruel actions, they are the deceits of Maya.
Birth, death, the fruits of sins and virtues, are scorching sorrows.

One life alone, one end, one way to reach;
But many substitutes and ghosts of each:
Lord, lest the false lights—moving round and round—
Too long bewray, do Thou, with secret speech,
Direct us truly unto stable ground!

Oh! fireflies, what a fiery rain
Commingling with the summer shower!

A priest did with a thief together come,
To th'place, where he was to receive his doom
Said; Be not sad, do but believe, and thou
Shalt be a guest, to feast with Angels now
He sigh'd, and said; if you'll true comfort shew,
Go then and take my place, I'l stay below
No, quoth the Priest, this day I keep a fast,
And cannot eat untill this day be past.

None goes along this way but I,
This autumn eve.

Not sobered up from my muddy Kao-yang drunk,
from time to time, pigs'-feet with a jar of wine!
Half soused, poetic thoughts swell up like springs:
silk scrolls, patterned papers, I'll inscribe them all!