RYOKAN

   One of my most beloved poets is Ryokan, born in 1757 in Echigo, Japan.  He became a Zen monk and led a life Christ-like in its gentleness and concern for humanity.  He is a marvel...I include only a few of his poems here.

"When the moon shines

Clean and clear

Let me enjoy a plum-branch

In the evening so quiet."

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"I know

The world is not

How it appears to be;

And yet how evanescent things are!"

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"Don't you see

Things will change for good?

Both flowers early and late

Will vanish away sooner or later."

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"Listening to the silent sound

Of the moss-covered stream

I feel myself grow as calm and transparent

As the soundless sound of the covered current!"

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Another version:

"Like the little stream

Making its way

Through the mossy crevices

I,too, quietly

Turn clear and transparent."

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"Though travels

take me to

 a different stopping place each night

the dream I dream is always

the same one of home."

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"Those days--I wonder,

did I dream them

or were they real?

In the night I listen

to the autumn rain."

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"Blending with the wind,

Snow falls;

Blending with the snow,

The wind blows.

By the hearth

I stretch out my legs,

Idling my time away

Confined in this hut.

Counting the days,

I find that February, too,

Has come and gone

Like a dream."

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"Stretched out,

Tipsy,

Under the vast sky:

Splendid dreams

Beneath the cherry blossoms."

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"Wild roses,

Plucked from fields

Full of croaking frogs:

Float them in your wine

And enjoy every minute!"

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"The thief

Left it behind--

The moon at the window."

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I, me, you again after more than twenty years

On a rickety bridge beneath the hazy moon,

In the spring wind.

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"At dusk

Come to my hut-

The crickets will

Serenade you, and I will

Introduce you to the moonlit woods."

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Your finger points to the moon,
but the finger is blind until the moon appears.
What connection has  moon and finger?
Are they separate objects or bound?
This is a question for beginners
wrapped in seas of ignorance.
Yet one who looks beyond metaphor
knows there is no finger; there is no moon.

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This is one my favorites written at the end of his life to a young woman that he loved and with whom he exchanged poems:

"My legacy--

What will it be?

Flowers in spring.

The cuckoo in summer,

And the crimson maples

Of autumn..."

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And on his deathbed he wrote:

showing their backs

then their fronts

the autumn leaves scatter in the wind

Many of these poems of Ryokans were taken from  Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf

Translated by John Stevens.