friday poetry blogging

[coraa]

By the monk and poet Ryokan.

Translated by Steven Carter:

     It's all I think of: of when I was young,
     reading books in the empty temple hall
     —refilling the lamp again and again with oil,
     never lamenting the long winter night.

Or, in the original:

     一思少年時
     読書在空堂
     灯火数添油
     未厭冬夜長

(Edit: lnhammer points out that it's interesting that the second is in Chinese, which is interesting since Ryokan is Japanese. I don't know if it was originally written in Chinese, or if my source is a translation of a translation, but it is interesting.)

Comments

[larryhammer]

So we have a Japanese zen monk writing in Chinese? Hmm.

Doing a good job of it.

---L.