Spring

02008-03-20 | Poetry

How can we lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
– Ryōkan

Thank you Y.

Rainer Maria Rilke

02008-03-12 | Poetry

Rainer Maria Rilke – Der Einsame – The lonely

His poems must be some of the most difficult to translate, because he creates wonderful word-trains… in the German language one can tie words together without a hyphen to create a new meaning or a sharper definition.

The above linked translation is well done and pretty accurate, but the rhymes are lost and so the sound of the poem is changed completely.

Years ago a friend showed me a book of Rilke translations by Stephen Mitchell – it might have been this one – and I commented that Mitchell had written new poetry inspired by the Rilke poems, but I felt that they were not translations. Fine line, of course. What is translation and what is re-writing (neudichten)?

Sometimes I marvel at our human ability to communicate complex meanings at all!

Now if I can only find some nice poetic titles for the new album (my cue to get up and walk over to the studio and work…)

Tao

02008-02-10 | Philosophy, Poetry, Reading

I noticed that Shambhala published a new translation of the Tao To Ching and the following caught my eye:

Of the many translations I have read in English, this is unquestionably the best.
– Gary Snyder

Since I love Gary Snyder’s poetry, those words worked on me and I ordered the book. When it came I opened it at random, as I always do, and arrived at this:

Mind opening leads to compassion,
Compassion leads to nobility,
Nobility leads to heavenliness,
Heavenliness leads to Tao.

Tao endures.
Your body dies.

There is no danger.

If it was up to me it would read like this:
Tao endures.
You die.

Parallels

02008-02-07 | Poetry

One day when Ryokan returned to his hut he discovered a robber who had broken in and was in the process of stealing his few possessions. In the thief’s haste to leave, he left behind a cushion. Ryokan grabbed the cushion and ran after the thief to give it to him. He then wrote one of his most famous poems:

The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.

From Idries Shah‘s book The Way of the Sufi:

A thief entered the house of a Sufi, and found nothing there. As he was leaving, the dervish perceived his disappointment and threw him the blanket in which he was sleeping, so that he should not go away empty-handed.