Drinking Wine

#2

The Way`s been in ruins a thousand
years. People all hoard their hearts

away: so busy scrambling for esteemed
position, they’d never touch wine.

But whatever makes living precious
occurs in this one life, and this

life never lasts. It’s startling,
sudden as lightning. These hundred

years offer all abundance: Take it!
What more could you make of yourself ?

David Hinton

#3

I live in town without all that racket
horses and carts stir up, and you wonder

how that could be. Wherever the mind
dwells apart is itself a distant place.

Picking chrysanthemums at my east fence,
far off; I see South Mountain: mountain

air lovely at dusk, birds in Bight
returning home. All this means something

something absolute. Whenever I start
explaining it, I’ve forgotten the words.

David Hinton

#5

I built my hut in the midst men,
Yet hear no clamor of horse and carriage.
You ask how it can be like this?
With the mind detached, place becomes remote.
Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge,
From afar I catch sight of the southern mountain.
The mountain air becomes ioveh., at sunset.
As flying birds return together in flocks.
he these things there is true meaning.
I’d like to explain. but have forgotten the words.

Wendy Swartz

#7

Fall chrysanthemums have beautiful colors:
dew still on them, I pick the blossoms,
float them on this drowner of care—
it makes me fccl farther than ever from the world.
Though I’m alone as I pour my wine,
when the cup’s empty, somehow the jar tips itself.
The sun has set, all moving things stilled;
homing birds hurry to the woods, singing,
and I whistle jauntily by the eastern caves—
another day I get to live this life.

Burton Watson

#9

Early this morning I heard someone knock,
and rushed to the door with my clothes upside down.
I called out, “Who’s there?”
A kindhearted old farmer
bringing me a pot of wine from far away.
He thought I was not moving with the times.
“To stand under thatched eaves in rags-
that is not the high branch where you should nest.
All the world is moving in the same direction.
Please go with the muddy flow.”
I was deeply touched by the villager’s words,
but by nature I’m in harmony with no one.
Though it’s true I can learn to turn my wagon around,
won’t I be lost if I act against my nature?
Let’s just enjoy this wine.
My wagon will not turn around!

Tony Barnstone

#17

The orchid, hidden, growing, in the court
swallowed in weeds waits wind,
clear wind, pure wind, stripping, burning, bends them low,
and the orchid’s seen, above the weedy artemisia.
Aimless motion, the old path lost…
If I could keep the way, and bear the truth
I might get through.
When I awake, I’ll memorize returning.
When the birds are all gone, a good bow’s wasted.

J.P. Seaton