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 become like you,
An empty boat, floating, adrift.

Translated by Kenneth Rexroth

 

Tu Fu (712 – 770) was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty and is frequently called the greatest of all Chinese poets. Kenneth Rexroth, described him as “the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language,” and added that “he has made me a better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism.” Considerable biographic material can be read on Wikipedia.

I love this poem for its concrete imagery and lyrical beauty. I was also interested by Rexroth’s comment that Tu Fu’s poetry made him a better “perceiving organism.” You and I are perceiving organisms, aren’t we and what we chose to perceive we describe as reality.

The scene is set as springtime in the mountain and the narrator is on a journey to meet a master who has a hermitage there – or, is the journey a personal, interior one in which the narrator desires to meet himself? The sound of chopping wood reminds me of the Zen saying, after enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water – meaning that enlightenment is experienced in the everyday tasks of the moment.

Perhaps the pass the narrator crosses refers to the satori experience itself. The ‘you’ who is addressed could be the reclusive monk or it might refer to the inner dialogue we hold in our heads between the I and you. Once the transformation has occurred, there is no way back to the unconscious life and the narrator sets off, letting the life force carry him. Many times the metaphor of ‘crossing the great water’ is used to describe the transformation enlightenment brings; and then there is the image of water as signifying the unconscious. Much to ponder in this short poem.