After Dinner, Idly Drafting a Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse from Last Night's Notes

2007/12/23 13:49:51

Flying back to Beijing tonight. I hear Beijing is bright with sunshine right now — a pity I'll arrive only to see streetlamps everywhere wasting energy.

A person must first and foremost be an honest human being. But if a person can only ever be a person, then they're nothing but a worthless person. A person is your present moment — not apart from the present, not identical to the present. If you can't even understand this, you've lived for nothing.

Being away, I won't write long articles. Poetry can be poetry precisely because it is not apart from the present, not identical to the present.

Midnight Inscription

Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán

The great dream imprisons heaven and earth
Each chooses their own bearing
Sorrow and joy — the heart paints things
Waking and drunkenness — karma makes its hour
A prosperous age, a night of brilliant lamps
A lone window — whose solitary shadow?
Spinning through the cycles of life and death
How many logs? How many blind turtles?