Enjoying Pine and Bamboo
by Bai Juyi (Po Chu)
I treasure what front eaves face
and all that north windows frame.
Bamboo winds lavish out windows,
pine colors exquisite beyond eaves,
I gather it all into isolate mystery,
thoughts fading into their source.
Others may feel nothing in all this,
but it’s perfectly open to me now:
such kindred natures need share
neither root nor form nor gesture.
After Coming Inside From Late Winter Work In The Garden
And Reading Po-Chu’s “Enjoying Pine & Bamboo”
Not asking you to need share,
O estranged kindred,
Root or form, nor gesture;
Yet, do not refuse
Such offerings as we commit–
This litter, these wastes–all food, this dross.
We–our kind–are yet
to often stand
and lavish each other,
As well as that which has broken the way before us
(Each in its own mystery)
With greater bounty, and that’s our loss.
The hand turns over, letting loess onto new snow
By wind be drifted, to fall and stain;
Pointing past any particular that or there
To here and now, into which
Thou and I as well as thought and feeling go.
The act of turning the hand over is a sowing
The grains of which mar cold purity;
That under Sol’s helm reduces ice to water
And clod to mud;
Such sowing of ash and dust the quickest way to open ground.
The hand turns back, palm skyward, to receive,
As if in a moment, what gift shall fall into it–
Leaf, Blossom, Berry, Fragrance.
This One & This One 