A Pact

A Pact

I'll make a pact with you, Walt Whitman--
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root--
Let there be commerce between us.

1913, 1916

Alba

Chłodna jak blade i wilgotne liście konwalii
Leżała przy mnie o świcie.

Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic

Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic

So-shu dreamed,
And having dreamed that the was a bird, a bee, and a butterfly,
He was uncertain why he should try to feel like anything else.
Hence his contentment.




Starożytna Mądrość, Raczej Kosmiczna

So-shu marzył,
A że w marzeniach swoich był to ptakiem, to pszczołą, to motylem,
Był niezdecydowany, po co szukać innych uczuć.
Stąd jego zadowolenie.

(tłum. Borys Awdiejew)

Canto XLIX

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.

Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes
against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it
sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
a cold tune amid reeds.
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October
Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.

Where wine flag catches the sunset
Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scur on the river
And a world is covered with jade
Small boat floats like a lanthorn,
The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin
they are a people of leisure.

Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,
Clouds gather about the hole of the window
Broad water; geese line out with the autumn
Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,

A light moves on the north sky line;
where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.
In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.
A light moves on the South sky line.

State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?
This is infamy; this is Geryon.
This canal goes still to TenShi
Though the old king built it for pleasure

K E I M E N R A N K E I
K I U M A N M A N K E I
JITSU GETSU K O K W A
T A N FUKU T A N K A I

Sun up; work
sundown; to rest
dig well and drink of the water
dig field; eat of the grain
Imperial power is? and to us what is it?
The fourth; the dimension of stillness.
And the power over wild beasts.

Coda

Coda

O my songs,
Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously
into people's faces,
Will you find your lost dead among them?




Coda

O pieśni moje,
Czemu tak dziwnie i tak natarczywie patrzycie
w ludzkie twarze,
Czy chcecie wśród nich odnaleźć zagubionych zmarłych?

(tłum. Borys Awdiejew)