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I THE PINE BRANCH
A Painting by Kenzan
A PINE-BRANCH stretches out | |
| Across the silence … | |
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| … Grey silence, untroubled | |
| Until this living thing | |
| Smote it into music…. | 5 |
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| The void is restless now. | |
| Silence shall be no more. | |
| Greyness shall be no more, | |
| Nor any peace. | |
| For a singing curve and color | 10 |
| Have entered the vast dwelling— | |
| A life, singing | |
| Of the suns and the snows. | |
| Now the old gods tremble | |
| In their timeless halls; | 15 |
| Now the far halls beyond Orion | |
| Are shaken with music. | |
| For this chord, living, | |
| This soul that knows not peace— | |
| This dream-dust—stretches out | 20 |
| Across the silence. | |
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II PINES ON A MOUNTAIN
A Screen by Yeitoku
Red pine-trunks! | |
| Immutable pines! | |
| Pillars upright under the grey sky! | |
| Pillars upright over the chasmed earth!— | 25 |
| Upon these snow-heights | |
| Your downward sloping branches | |
| Point toward the human world | |
| Remote and troubled. | |
| But here on the ultimate ramparts | 30 |
| Of the winter hills, | |
| Your huge columns | |
| Rise toward bleak heaven— | |
| Like an indomitable procession | |
| Of warriors, dark, green-crested, | 35 |
| To whom the snows | |
| Are only wine and trumpets, | |
| To whom the winds | |
| Are only battle. | |
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III THE WAVE SYMPHONY
A Screen by Sotatsu
Around islands of jade and malachite | 40 |
| And lapis-lazuli and jasper, | |
| Under golden clouds, | |
| Struggle the grey-gold waves. | |
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| The waves are advancing, | |
| Swirling, eddying; the pale waves | 45 |
| Are leaping into foam, and retreating— | |
| And straining again until they seem not waves | |
| But gigantic crawling hands. | |
| The waves clutch at the clouds, | |
| The near and golden clouds; | 50 |
| They rise in spires over the clouds, | |
| And over the pine-branch set against the clouds. | |
| And around the islands, | |
| Jasper and jade, | |
| Their rhythms circle and sweep and re-echo | 55 |
| With hollow and foam-crest, | |
| Infinitely interlacing their orbits and cycles | |
| That join and unravel, and battle and answer, | |
| From tumult to tumult, from music to music, | |
| Crest to trough, foam-height to hollow, | 60 |
| Peace drowning passion, and passion | |
| Leaping from peace. | |
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IV BUDDHA APPEARING FROM BEHIND MOUNTAINS
A Painting by Choga
Two hills meet— | |
| Two dark green hills. | |
| About their shoulders | 65 |
| Silver mists cling. | |
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| Slowly the gigantic | |
| Face of the Buddha | |
| In massive presence | |
| Looks over the hills. | 70 |
| Tranquil his brow, unsmiling his lips; | |
| Filling the whole sky with his haloes of glory, | |
| He broods in a dream of gold. | |
| Measureless peace sleeps on his golden forehead; | |
| Measureless compassion | 75 |
| Weighs on his eyes. | |
| Yet as I look | |
| It seems that his terrible hidden hands | |
| Even now are stirring | |
| To rend apart the hills— | 80 |
| To divide the corrupt and cloven earth | |
| For the triumphal entry of his burning form. | |
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