The Diamond Sutra is Occam's sharpest razor.

 Whatever your view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this must be condemned: Firing rockets from a populated area knowing it will provoke retaliation that will cause casualties among your your own civilians, casualties for which you can then elicit sympathy and outrage from the rest of the world.

God is always laughing.  Whether with us or at us is a matter of our hearing.

Like many of George Catlin's works, this painting has the interesting quality of its overall composition being significantly more stylized than the images it comprises.

So many of us are prey to various crackpot ideologies that we are very lucky that most of us also do not have the courage of our convictions.

Li Bai: My Translations to English 李白

Blue mountains to the north of town.

White water to the east of town.

We stop here for a last goodbye:

Thistledown flies a thousand li.

Now you must be a floating cloud,

and your old friend, the setting sun.

Waving, each goes his separate way.

Parting horses nicker and neigh.

送友人

青山橫北郭， 白水遶東城。
此地一為別， 孤蓬萬里征。
浮雲游子意， 落日故人情。
揮手自茲去， 蕭蕭班馬鳴。

As flowers bloom and leaves unfold,
my friend sets out, west for Guanling.
His solitary sail recedes,
vanishing where river meets sky.

                        

Two versions of "Jade Stairs"

Resentment on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,

white dew soaks her silken hose.

Draw down then the crystal shade:

fall's moon glitters in its gems.

                                                                          

Stood Up on the Jade Stairs

Midnight on the stairs of jade,

white dew soaked your silken hem.

Draw down then the crystal shade:

moonlight glitters in its gems.

High Summer

Lazing in the mountain wood,

waving a white feather fan,

I get up, open my clothes,

hang my headband on a rock.

Green pine wind plays through my hair.

Wine with the Mountain Hermit

We drink amid the mountain flowers.

A cup, one more, and then another.

I'm in a stupor, you stagger off.

Come back with your lute, when you can.

Alone in My Cups

Drinking wine, unaware

of nightfall. Fallen flowers

fill the folds of my clothes.

Getting up and walking

to the moonlit river,

where no birds and few men

remain.










SPRING NIGHT:  A FLUTE IN LOYANG


From which house, fleeting, invisible notes
mingling with the wind and fillng the city?
Hearing that tune, A Willow Twig for Parting,
who could not dwell on thoughts of home?

Ono no Komachi: My Translations to English

Contemplating Death and Cremation

Sad to end as just

a green haze drifting pale

over distant fields.

Falling, the long rain,

the color from the flower,

the eye through the world.

I'm as happy with this translation of Komachi as a poem in English as I am with any of mine.  I wrote it after reading two or three other translations.  One of them--Rexroth's?--had something about the watching eye falling through the world.  As I read more translations and commentaries, there was nothing else much like it.  So thought perhaps my version drew on a rather dubious source.  However, I've just found that the Japanese word nagame, here translated as "long rain," can also mean "to watch."  So--dubious no more, and I'm happy again. 

Should the stream whisper come,

like a severed reed,

I would float away,

adrift as my heart.

Moonlight pouring through the trees

fills me up with autumn.