Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems

by Shinkichi Takahashi, Lucien Stryk (Translator), Takashi Ikemoto (Translator)

Overview

"You need know nothing of Zen to become immersed in his work. You will inevitably know something of Zen when you emerge" (Jim Harrison, American Poetry Review).
 
Shinkichi Takahashi is one of the truly great figures in world poetry. In the classic Zen tradition of economy, disciplined attention, and subtlety, Takahashi lucidly captures that which is contemporary in its problems and experiences, yet classic in its quest for unity with the Absolute. Lucien Stryk, Takahashi's fellow poet and close friend, here presents Takahashi's complete body of Zen poems in an English translation that conveys the grace and power of Takahashi's superb art.
 
"A first-rate poet . . . [Takahashi] springs out of some crack between ordinary worlds: that is, there is some genuine madness of the sort striven for in Zen." —Robert Bly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802198273
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/24/2019
Sold by:	OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	964 KB

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A Wood in Sound

The pine tree sways in the smoke,
Which streams up and up.
There's a wood in sound.

My legs lose themselves Where the river mirrors daffodils Like faces in a dream.

A cold wind and the white memory Of a sasanqua.
Warm rain comes and goes.

I'll wait calmly on the bank Till the water clears And willows start to bud.

Time is singed on the debris Of air raids.
Somehow, here and now, I am another.


Aching of Life

There must be something better,
But I'm satisfied just as I am.

Monkeys sport deep in the forest,
Fish shoot up the mountain stream.

If there's change, there's also repose —
Which soon must suffer change.

Along the solar orbit of the night,
I feel life's constant aching:

Smack in the middle of the day,
I found moonlight between a woman's legs.


Snow Wind

There's nothing more to see:
Snow in the nandin's leaves And, under it, the red-eyed Rabbit lies frozen.

I'll place everything on Your eyeballs, the universe.
There's nothing more to see:
Nandin berries are red, snow white.

The rabbit hopped twice in the cool Breeze and everyone disappeared,
Leaving the barest scent.
The horizon curves endlessly

And now there's no more light Around the rabbit's body.
Suddenly your face Is large as the universe.


Canna

A red canna blooms,
While between us flickers A death's head, dancing there Like a pigmy or tiny ball.

We try to catch it —
Now it brushes my hands,
Now dallies with her feet.

She often talks of suicide.
Scared, I avoid her cold face.

Again today she spoke Of certain premonitions.
How can I possibly Save this woman's life?

Living as if dead, I shall Give up my own. She must: live.


Time

Time like a lake breeze Touched his face,
All thought left his mind.

One morning the sun, menacing,
Rose from behind a mountain,
Singeing — like hope — the trees.

Fully awakened, he lit his pipe And assumed the sun-inhaling pose:
Time poured down — like rain, like fruit.

He glanced back and saw a ship Moving towards the past. In one hand He gripped the sail of eternity,

And stuffed the universe into his eyes.


The Pink Sun

White petals on the black earth,
Their scent filling her nostrils.

Breathe out and all things swell —
Breathe in, they shrink.

Let's suppose she suddenly has four legs —
That's far from fantastic.

I'll weld ox hoofs onto her feet —
Sparks of the camellia's sharp red.

Wagging her pretty little tail,
She's absorbed in kitchen work.

Look, she who just last night Was a crone is girl again,

An alpine rose blooming on her arm.
High on a Himalayan ridge

The great King of Bhutan Snores in the pinkest sun.


Thistles

Thistles bloomed in the vast moonlit Cup of the Mexican sands.

Thistles bloomed on the round hillock Of a woman's heart.

The stained sea was choked with thistles,
Sky stowed away in thistle stalks.

Thistles, resembling a male corpse, bloomed Like murex from a woman's side.

At the thorny root of a yellow cactus plant A plucked pigeon crouched,

And off in the distance a dog whimpered,
As if swallowing hot air.


Rat on Mount Ishizuchi

Snow glitters on the divine rocks At the foot of Mount Ishizuchi.
Casting its shadow on the mountain top,
A rat flies off.

At the back of the sun,
Where rats pound rice into cakes,
There's a cavity like a mortar pit.

A flyer faster than an airplane,
That's the sparrow.
Mount Ishizuchi, too, flies at a devilish speed,
Ten billion miles a second,
From everlasting to everlasting.

Yet, because there's no time,
And always the same dusk,
It doesn't fly at all:
The peak of Mount Ishizuchi Has straightened the spine Of the Island of Futana.

Because there's no space The airplane doesn't move an inch:
The sun, the plane boarded by the rat,
Are afloat in the sparrow's dream.


Burning Oneself to Death

That was the best moment of the monk's life.
Firm on a pile of firewood With nothing more to say, hear, see,
Smoke wrapped him, his folded hands blazed.

There was nothing more to do, the end Of everything. He remembered, as a cool breeze Streamed through him, that one is always In the same place, and that there is no time.

Suddenly a whirling mushroom cloud rose Before his singed eyes, and he was a mass Of flame. Globes, one after another, rolled out,
The delighted sparrows flew round like fire balls.


Nehru

A ship sailed from the back of Nehru's head.
From this alley one has a rather good view Of the Himalayas, the white undulating peaks Pressed upon the rotting tilted eaves.

In Goa do the pebbles have eyes?
Nehru's eyes: holes like those in coals And dry sardines. At dusk his lean shanks And white Gandhi cap enter an alley.

A streetcar runs along his lashes,
Smoke continues to rise from his body.
At the quaking of the Himalayas,
Mount Everest became a heap of coals.


Strawberry

Like a flower she opens at my side,
Always. Imagine, once She'd hand me a bowl of milk.

By observing only what's before me,
I'm everywhere, anytime. The flower's Wax perhaps, phony as the rest.

Things rising from the mind Have no real being. What's real Is the strawberry. And yet.

And yet to call it real is to reject The rest, all of it. Say she lives,
Why then she lives completely alone.

She breaks a bowl, and now There's something like a stalk In her fist, smooth, even.

Overjoyed, she may bite the baby's nose.


Ox and Sleet

When an ox, sleet covered my horns And, like a bird on a TV antenna,
A rock lodged on the tip of my tongue.
Wind swirls the globe, and there's A Catholic Sister who, in her white wimple,
Resembles an ox's hoof (the universe Wavers in the nest of the ox's nose).

When a deer, a maple grew from my leg —
Now whether something's there or not,
What difference? A thing lies neither Sidelong nor lengthwise, after all,
And this woman breathes life into the universe In one breath an ox became a deer.


Cock

Where were you?
Under those leaves piled in the corner?
Dirty cock!
Look — your comb is laced with snow.

You spread your useless wings,
Scratch the earth.
Just what are you about,
Under a heavy sky?

I try your thin warm neck,
And you don't attempt To shake me off —
Yet you're in agony.

Hopeless! Your beak,
Which should be slashing at my arm,
Is still. Do you really mean To give up without a flap,

Just one flap of those wings?
I stride through a cold Wind, a stuffed Bamboo sheath under the arm.


Back Yard

The sky clears after rain,
Yellow roses glistening in the light.
Crossing two thresholds, the cat moves off.

Your back is overgrown with nandin leaves.
How awkward your gait!
Like a chicken on damp leaves.
Your necktie, made from skin Of a tropical fighting fish,
Is hardly subdued. Your yolk-colored Coat will soon be dyed With blood again, like a cock's crest.

Let your glances pierce Like a hedgehog's spines,
I reject them. I can't imagine What would happen if our glances met.

One day I'll pulverize you.
Now you're scratching In the bamboo roots, famished.
Watch it — I'll toss you down a hole.

With your cockspurs you kick off Mars, earth, mankind,
All manner of things, then Pick over them with your teeth.

Atomic horses bulge through The pores of a peachlike girl.
The persimmon's leaves are gone again.


The Pipe

While I slept it was all over,
Everything. My eyes, squashed white,
Flowed off toward dawn.

There was a noise,
Which, like all else, spread and disappeared:
There's nothing worth seeing, listening for.

When I woke, everything seemed cut off.
I was a pipe, still smoking,
Which daylight would knock empty once again


Crow

The crow, spreading wide wings,
Flapped lazily off.
Soon her young will be doing the same,
Firm wings rustling.

It's hard to tell the male Crow from the female,
But their love, their mating Must be fresh as their flight.

Asleep in a night train,
I felt my hat fly off.
The crow was lost in mist,
The engine ploughed into the sea.


White Flower

One flower, my family and I,
And I but a petal.
I grasp a hoe in one hand,
Wife and child by the other.

It wasn't I who drove that stake Into the earth, then pulled it out.
I'm innocent — rather we are,
Like that white cloud above.

I stretch out my right hand: nothing.
I raise my left: nobody.
A white flower opens,
And now I stand apart

While, above, a bomber soars.
My family and I are buried alive.
I'm a handful of earth.
Untraceable.


A Spray of Hot Air

Trees everywhere, and buds About to burst in sunlight,
Which makes a river of the snow.

A mongrel rushes up To the woman pulling Water from the field well.

It moves rapidly around her Like a spray of hot air.
Bit by bit she clouds up.

Then, as the mongrel Leaps about in mist,
She disappears.


City

At every breath I'm happier.
What's this? Am I mad again?
I went mad once, then again.

At every breath I'm happier.
I sneeze: an explosion of ash, puff!
The city blazes, disappears.

Once again I'll build myself A house, fireproof, pleasant.
I begin carting bricks, with others.

The cornerstone is laid, my dream Indestructible. But then I sneeze —
The city rises like the phoenix.


Murmuring of the Water

One morning I woke onto a hill Of withered grasses,
Myself, my family among them.

We swayed, all of us, under the wind,
And so did our shadows.

No more did the laughter of women Assault my ears,
And I heard the murmuring Of the limpid water of the Galaxy.

When, desperate, I stretched out My thin dry arms,
Stars broke from the sky.


Pigeon

The pigeon sleeps with half-dosed eyes.
Opened, they fill with azaleas And space expands before them.
There are white plum blossoms like little faces,
A milky fog about the sun.
The pigeon's no solid, not one or two.

Curiously the red camellia has both stamen, pistil,
And in the mother's dim shrunken bosom a million babies,
Hair tips glistening, green necks glittering,
Are like pigeons taking wing.

Yet those eyes are sightless, turned in,
And the bed sheets are like ink stains,
Blurred with babies,
To be wiped clean by the mother's numberless wings.

Now is the time of hydrangeas,
And yellow butterflies flit into the mother's mind,
While the gray pigeons, flying helter-skelter,
Cannot escape, drop onto the shoulder of the atomic furnace

(They enjoy the faint warmth, bulging like a dream).
On the wire netting, the droppings of nuclear weapons:
Snow falls on my shoulders, a pigeon sails off alone.


Mummy

Resuscitated By the kiss of a bat On its papyrus mouth And the Nile's spring thrust,
The mummy arose amidst The jolting pillars And strode from the cave,
Followed by a throng of bats.

Tripping on a pyramid step,
The mummy was landed upon By a bat, a sarcophagus lid,
Who, by patting its head with her wing,
Unwound the mummy's cloth,
Dipped it in the Nile,
Then wrapped it round herself From claw-tips to shoulders.
She lay down — a mummy.

Tail up, the sphinx came To sniff her all over,
But the bat was fast asleep.
How many centuries have slipped by?
The dam's dried up,
This once submerged temple Stands again,
Its stone birds Have once more taken flight.


Red Waves

A cat, a black-white tabby out of nowhere,
Licks its back at the water's edge:
Perhaps — with that bit of metal dangling From her middle — a space cat,
Readying to fly off again.

But how to ask her? I opened my hand, wide,
Just in front of her face, at which She flipped over, legs up and pointing Toward the sea in the pose of a "beckoning cat."

The sea obliged: she was carried off Bobbing on the waves. Was she drowned?
I asked myself over and over,
Alone for hours on the moonlit beach.

Suddenly a red parasol came rolling Toward me — the cat's? It danced along The windless shore, with me chasing full tilt.
I didn't have a chance. Come daybreak I spotted the parasol rising above a rock:
The sun, blinding! Red waves reached my ankles.


Sparrow in Winter

Breakdown fluttering in the breeze,
The sparrow's full of air holes.
Let the winds of winter blow,
Let them crack a wing, two,
The sparrow doesn't care.

The air streams through him, free, easy,
Scattering feathers, bending legs.
He hops calmly, from branch to empty branch In an absolutely spaceless world.

I'd catch, skewer, broil you,
But my every shot misses: you're impossible.
All at once there's the sound Of breaking glass, and houses begin To crumple. Rising quickly,
An atomic submarine nudges past your belly.


The Martian Rock

The Thames beneath my hands,
The Seine underfoot: I'm always alone,
Trampling your heads,
You who are as so many watermelon pips

You are so many, clinging To my arms, thighs:
I split you on the tip of my tongue.
The Sumida River stinks
(There's nothing between us),
Mine is the Tone River's mouth
(You breathe no longer, dead).

Hard rain across the earth,
And through the mist A red headlight.
The wind flows through me,
Toes to ears:
I'm gassified to nothingness.

What use have eyes?
I'm somewhere, nowhere.
High in the air a hand beckons,
And I'm off again, flying.

When I come down The Martian rock will split.


Destruction

The universe is forever falling apart —
No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger's touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,
Hordes leap from the tips Of your nostril hairs. Lift: your right hand:
It's in your palm. There's room enough On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe:
Here is all strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him.


Disclosure

The sparrow sleeps, thinking of nothing.
Meanwhile the universe has shrunk to half.
He's attached by a navel string, swimming In a sea of fluid, amniotic, slightly bitter.

The center is "severance"— no sound at all —
Until the navel string is snapped. All of which Was told by her as she sat astride Pegasus,
The poet on a circuit of the universe.
The sparrow came at her, bill like a sword,
And suddenly from her buttocks — the sun!
The sparrow carried the stained sheets To the moon. On drawing the clouds apart,

He discovered the cold corpse of Mars.
Not once had he disclosed the secrets of his life.


The Hare

The hare was in the misty rubbish,
Ruby-eyed, knowing no hindrance.
The tide laps the soul's shore,
There are shoals beyond the stars.

A blue tree blossomed there,
A wall heavy with ivy.
Sea and mountains, like dust specks,
Were floating in the soul.

The hare leapt, danced above the rubbish —
Soul's the one reality,
Nothing extending beyond it.
So roared the sea in the hare's head.


Duck
•
The duck stood on the mountain top,
Then, spreading wings, leapt down

To where the sea was chanting, chanting,
White ripples moving up the beach.

Again the duck went up the mountain path Overgrown with summer grasses,

And waddled through the cedars, watery Cool, dark except where sunlight caught

Green leaves. Try as she might,
The duck could not regain the mountain top

Summer passed, and it was spring again.
I wrenched off my silver watch

And tossed it in a rosebed: yellow Petals fell like feathers on the duckbill.


What is Moving

When I turned to look back Over the waters The sky was birdless.

Men were, are born.
Do I still live? I ask myself,
Munching a sweet potato.

Don't smell of death,
Don't cast its shadow.
Any woman when I glance her way,
Looks down,
Unable to stand it.
Men, as if dead,
Turn up the whites of their eyes.

Get rid of those trashy ideas —
The same thing Runs through both of us.
My thought moves the world:
I move, it moves.
I crook my arm, the world's crooked.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Triumph of the Sparrow"
by .
Copyright © 1986 Lucien Stryk.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Introduction,
A Wood in Sound,
Aching of Life,
Snow Wind,
Canna,
Time,
The Pink Sun,
Thistles,
Rat on Mount Ishizuchi,
Burning Oneself to Death,
Nehru,
Strawberry,
Ox and Sleet,
Cock,
Back Yard,
The Pipe,
Crow,
White Flower,
A Spray of Hot Air,
City,
Murmuring of the Water,
Pigeon,
Mummy,
Red Waves,
Sparrow in Winter,
The Martian Rock,
Destruction,
Disclosure,
The Hare,
Duck,
What Is Moving,
Autumn Flowers,
The Peach,
One Hundred Billionth of a Second,
Quails,
Flower,
Stillness,
Horse,
Misty Rain,
Collapse,
Sun,
Words,
Rain,
Chidori Pool,
Bream,
Time,
Cat,
The Position of the Sparrow,
Life Infinite,
Paper Door,
Deck,
Spring Snow,
The Cloud and the Butterfly,
On a Day of Continuous Rain,
Black Smoke,
Evening Clouds,
Mascot,
Wind,
Wind among the Pines,
Stitches,
Sun and Flowers,
Comet,
Immutability,
Snail,
Here,
If I Am Flowers,
Man,
Statue of Kudara-Avalokitesvara,
Fish,
Cock,
Crab,
Ants,
Sun,
Sun through the Leaves,
Magpie,
A Richer Ground,
Penguins,
Ivies,
Sparrow,
Apricot,
White Paper,
On the Wind,
Like Dewdrops,
Apex of the Universe,
Ice,
What Dashes?,
Wild Camomiles,
The Solid Season,
Lovebird,
Rat and Woman,
Body,
Afterimages,
Shell,
Mushroom,
Flight of the Sparrow,
Sky,
Sparrow in Withered Field,
Afternoon,
Hand,
Sweet Potato,
Camel,
Raw Fish and Vegetables,
Downy Hair,
Toad,
Drizzle,
Sea of Oblivion,
Cloud,
Mother and I,
Sheep,
Eternity,
Sparrow and Bird-Net Building,
Clay Image,
Gods,
Braggart Duck,
Stone Wall,
Beach,
Moon and Hare,
Lap Dog,
Moon,
Vimalakirti,
Snowy Sky,
Near Shinobazu Pond,
Let's Live Cheerfully,
Rocks,
Urn,
Spring,
Peach Blossom and Pigeon,
Spinning Dharma Wheel,
Four Divine Animals,
A Little Sunlight,
Explosion,
Railroad Station,
Absence,
Interview with Shinkichi Takahashi,
Bibliography,