Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Sanest of Men: a celebration of the Chinese poet T'ao Ch'ien.

A sample of T'ao Ch'ien's writing, trans. David Hinton:

Drinking Wine

I live here in this busy village without
all that racket horses and carts stir up,

and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself

a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my east fence, I see South Mountain

far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
going home. All this means something,

something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether.

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