Written on the Wall at Chang’s Hermitage
It is Spring in the mountains.
I come alone seeking you
The sound of chopping wood echoes
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stony mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I come like you,
An empty boat, floating, adrift.
By Tu Fu
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
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All Things Sing You
You come and go.
The doors swing closed ever more gently, almost without a shudder.
Of all those who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.
We become so accustomed to you, we no longer look up when
your shadow falls over the book we are reading and makes it glow.
For all things sing you: at times we hear them more clearly.
Often when I imagine you your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer and I am dark,
I am forest.
You are a wheel at which I stand, whose dark spokes sometimes
catch me up, revolve me nearer to the center.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
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