J.P. Seaton

seaton

Translations of
the Chinese Masters

Contents

 

Ten Poems by Ou-yang Hsiu
  Ou-yang Hsui

Poems from "An Answering Music"
  Anonymous, Drunken Villagers
  Tu Fu, House Cricket and Song of the Bound Chickens
  Yuan Mei, Dog Days, At "Be Careful Bank," Night Thought, Talking Art, When the Clouds Come

More Poems by Yan Mei and Poems by T'ao Ch'ien
  Yuan Mei, End of the Year, Something to Ridicule
  T'ao Ch'ien, Drinking Wine XVI, After the Ancients

Poems from "Traces: Fifty Generations of Zen Poetry "
  Seng Yu, To everything there is a season
  Ling Yi, Drinking Tea with Hermit Yuan at Greenmount Pool
  Cheng Fu, Freedom's Good
  Kuan Hsiu, Chung-nan Mountain Monk, Mean Alleyways, A Hundred Sorrows, Leaving It to You
  Ching Yun, The Old Man of the Creek
  Yuan Mei, So Be It
  Ching An, Making a Fool of Myself

Poem from "World Views: New Writing About Nature"
  Kuan Hsiu, Hymn on the Way

Poems from "Getting Past Words"
  Ching An, To Show You All, on the First Morning of the Year, Facing Snow and Writing What My Heart Embraces, On the Spot Where Shih-chia Tz Sits in Meditation

 

A Web Chapbook from
The Literary Review


 J.P. Seaton

Translations of the Chinese Masters


CHING AN

To Show You All, on the First Morning of the Year

A thousand thousand worlds,
a single breath,
one turn of the Great Potter's Wheel.

The withered tree blossoms
in a Spring beyond illusion.

Pop!
The firecrackers bring me back:
the laugh's on me.

This year's man
is last year's man.






Facing Snow and Writing What My Heart Embraces

At Mount Ssu-mingin
the cold in the snow
half a lifetime's bitter chanting.
Beard hairs are easy to pluck out
one by one:
a poem's words are hard
to put together.
Pure
vanity
to vent the heart and spleen;
words and theories, sometimes, aren't enough.
Loneliness, loneliness
my everyday affair.
The soughing winds
pass on the night bell sound.






On the Spot Where Shih-chia Tz Sits in Meditation

Ten thousand trees
cold forest
as I came up through the blue greens of the hillside.

Wafting in the wind
white crane, my feathery head
a long time beyond scheming.

The sound of the stream
is, after all,
without a present, or a past.

The beauty of the mountain colors:
what could it have to do
with "right" or "wrong"?

The lush grass of the high pass
may certainly mislead
the wanderer's clogs.

Cliffside flowers
sometimes fall
on a robe that's sitting zazen.

If you ask the teacher
when
did you come to sit on T'ien T'ai Mountain?

"Green pines I planted
with my own hands:
ten hands' span, now."