After Han-Shan's Poem #3
Lovely, the road to Cold Mountain
where there is no sign of traffic,
where valleys blur
and streams twist and tangle,
where ridge upon ridge
climbs even higher,
where the thousand grasses
bend with dew
and the pines
moan and murmur in the wind,
where, when you lose your way,
you follow your own shadow home.
After Han-Shan's Poem #4
Give me this solitude where
I am free of the world's
dust and noise. Let me tramp
my lazy paths into the grasses
and greet the clouds like neighbors.
If I want to sing, the birds
will help me, no need for
preaching. I am an ancient
like the cedar: eight thousand
of your years is just one spring.
After Han-Shan's Poem #9
People ask the way to Cold Mountain.
There is no way. Even in summer
there is ice. The morning sun stays lost
in fog. Could you get here as I did?
Our minds are not the same. If yours were
like mine, you would be here already.
After Han-Shan's Poem #17
The seasons turn and keep turning.
One year follows another.
The thousand things die and are reborn.
The universe stays steady and certain.
When there's light in the east,
it grows dark to the west.
Flowers fade, yet they bloom again.
Only man, the weary traveler,
goes into the darkness and never returns.
After Han-Shan's Poem #18
The new year has ended
the old one's sorrow.
Spring comes now with
all its colors.
Mountains streams and flowers
laugh together
and the trees keep
swaying in green wind.
Butterflies and bees
flutter and buzz.
And the fish! The birds!
With such companions
who can sleep past dawn?
Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.