Not spring nor autumn
None touch the heights of Fuji
Baishitsu
Across the summer stream
With such joy
My sandals in my hand
Buson
Oh my… Oh my…
Was all I could say
Of the flowers on Mount Yoshino
Teishitsu
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
- William Shakespeare
I do not want happiness, name and fame.
If I want them, I can get them.
What is most difficult to get is
Your Compassion.
And for that I am crying, I am
shedding bitter tears.
I am not getting Your Compassion.
The world is smiling and laughing at me.
But I wish only to be enamoured of
Your victory.
- Sri Chinmoy
The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds.
It is darkness vibrant, sonant.
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics
Just loosed from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.
The sea has joined the fray,
And swirled up mountain-waves,
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand, thousand shades
Of Death begrimed and black-
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy,
Come, Mother, come! Continue reading
The Autumn moon
Shining so brightly
So I wrote this.
Sekkei
Cry not, insects
For even stars in love
Must endure separation.
Issa
Watching the cormorant fishing boats
In time
I was full of sorrow.
Basho
Some villages have no sea bream
Some no flowers
But all see tonight’s moon.
Saikaku
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
By: Emily Dickinson
Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joy inclin’d,
Lawless, wing’d & unconfin’d,
And breaks all chains from every mind.
Deceit to secresy confin’d
Lawful, cautious & refin’d
To every thing but interest blind,
And forges fetters for the mind.
- William Blake
In field nor mountain, nothing stirs
On this snowy morning.
Chiyo – Ni
But for their cries,
The herons would be lost
Amidst the morning snow.
Chiyo – Ni
I break my fast
Amidst the morning glory.
Basho
In the spring rain
All things grow beautiful.
Chiyo Ni
Mystic Miracle, daughter of Delight,
Life, thou ecstasy,
Let the radius of thy flight
Be eternity.
On thy wings thou bearest high
Glory and disdain,
Godhead and mortality,
Ecstasy and pain.
Take me in thy wild embrace
Without weak reserve
Body dire and unveiled face;
Faint not, Life, nor swerve.
All thy bliss I would explore,
All thy tyranny.
Cruel like the lion’s roar,
Sweet like springtide be.
Like a Titan I would take,
Like a God enjoy,
Like a man contend and make,
Revel like a boy.
More I will not ask of thee,
Nor my fate would choose;
King or conquered let me be,
Live or lose.
Even in rags I am a god;
Fallen, I am divine;
High I triumph when down-trod,
Long I live when slain.
By: Sri Aurobindo
I don’t get tired of you. Don’t grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!
All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.
I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it’s thirsty for!
Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.
All this fantasy
and grief.
Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night in the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.
Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.
A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don’t want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.
I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.
The grief-armies assemble,
but I’m not going with them.
This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.
A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.
By: Rumi
Translation: Coleman Barks