poetry

The great masters' entire teaching can be found on the tips of the ten-thousand grasses.  -Lingzhao

Watching the moon
at midnight,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

-Izumi Shikibu, tr. Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

-Izumi Shikibu, tr. Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani

On the Spirit of the Heart as Moon-Disk
   Merely to know
The Flawless Moon dwells pure
  In the human heart
Is to find the Darkness of the night
Vanished under clearing skies.

-Kojiju, tr. Edwin A. Cranston

The madness of love
Is a blessed fate;
And if we understood this
We would seek no other:
It brings into unity
What was divided,
And this is the truth:
Bitterness it makes sweet,
It makes the stranger a neighbor,
And what was lowly it raises on high.

- Hadewijch of Antwerp, tr. Oliver Davies

In a boundless unknowing
I have lost my very self.

- Hadewijch II, as quoted by Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), tr. Sheila Hughes

You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within

There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting

- Hadewijch II, tr. Jane Hirshfield

On this summer night
All the household lies asleep,
And in the doorway,
For once open after dark,
Stands the moon, brilliant, cloudless.

- Jusammi Chikako, tr. Edwin A. Cranston

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.

- Lal Ded, tr. Coleman Barks

Teach my heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day.

- Chiyo-Ni, as quoted by (D.T. Suzuki?)

The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.

- Uvavnuk, quoted by Knud Rasmussen tr. W. Worster

Beauty before me,
Beauty behind me,
Beauty below me,
Beauty above me,
Beauty all around me.
I walk in beauty.

- Navajo prayer (about hozho)

A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.
Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.
Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.

- Anna Akhmatova, tr. Jane Kenyon

Forest Lake
I was alone on a sunny shore
by the forest's pale blue lake,
in the sky floated a single cloud
and on the water a single isle.
The ripe sweetness of summer dripped
in beads from every tree
and straight into my opened heart
a tiny drop ran down.

- Edith Sodergran, tr Stina Katchadourian

(from "Women in Praise of the Sacred", ed. Jane Hirshfield.)