OUR WORLD COMES WITH US

Setting out daily
on new roads that to nothing
crumble before I arrive,

leaving me in trackless waste
or lost in pathless forest.

ON THE RIVER, I SAW THE WATERS SURGING LIKE THE OCEAN: A SKETCHY ACCOUNT

I have always been a little off,

      so driven by love of well-made verse,

pursuing that word of startling rightness,

      I'd sooner die than rest.

In my reckless old age,

      my words and I overwhelm each other.

So you needn't fear, birds and flowers,

     for the secrets of your spring.

Just now, I've put in a pier

      to dangle a fishing line from.

Before, I was angling from an anchored raft

      in place of a boat.

Who could I get with the mind of a master

      like Tao or Xie

to help out with my writing

      and wander the nearby world with me?

--Du Fu, my tr.

Posted this before.  Now I've reworked the first three lines.

Religious faith isn't necessarily incompatible w/ evolution, but faith of the the sort that holds everything in the Bible to be literally true--that kind of faith is. It seems to me an insupportable belief, but if you do believe it, you have to deny evolution or your head explodes. Also, God as the ground of being or the universe as God's art project snuggles up comfortably with evolution and modern cosmology. But when you've got a God whose main concern is the creation of us humans and the regulation of our lives, the vastness of the universe beyond our tiny speckappears suspiciously superfluous.https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/229330380483493 

I'm not inclined to take seriously the pronouncements of people, right or left, about what's constitutional or unconstitutional as long as they see everything they like to be constitutional and everything they don't like to be unconstitutional. The constitution is a good document, a great document, but not a perfect document. In providing for amendment, the constitution itself implies that it is not an infallible guide to the good.

SPRING NIGHT: HEARING A FLUTE IN LOYANG

From which house, fleeting, invisible notes
mingling with the wind and filling the city?
Hearing that tune, A Willow Twig for Parting,
who would not dwell on thoughts of home?
     --Li Bai, my tr.

UNTITLED

Meeting is hard and parting is harder.
The east wind slackens and flowers wither.
The spring silk worm spins silk till it dies.
The wax candle sheds tears till it's ash.
Morning mirror, fretting over disordered hair.
Midnight chanting, not feeling the cold.
Penglai, the faerie mountain, is somewhere near.
Bluebird, would you spy it out for me.
     --Li Shanglin, my tr.

PASSING THE TEMPLE OF TEEMING FRAGRANCE

The Temple of Teeming Fragrance
measureless miles in summit clouds.
Ancient forest, a pathless way.
Deep mountains, directionless bell.
Spring water over jagged rocks.
Yellow sun on cool green pines.
Twilight, winding pool.  Quiet sitting
uncoils the poison dragon round the heart.
     --Wang Wei, my tr.