SAKYAMUNI COMING OUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN Liang Kai, Southern Sung
He drags his bare feet out of a cave under a tree, eyebrows grown long with weeping and hooknosed woe, in ragged soft robes wearing a fine beard, unhappy hands clasped to his naked breast — humility is beatness humility is beatness — faltering into the bushes by a stream, all things inanimate but his intelligence — stands upright there tho trembling: Arhat who sought Heaven under a mountain of stone, sat thinking till he realized the land of blessedness exists in the imagination — the flash come: empty mirror — how painful to be born again wearing a fine beard, reentering the world a bitter wreck of a sage: earth before him his only path. We can see his soul, he knows nothing like a god: shaken meek wretch — humility is beatness before the absolute World.
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Ginsberg
SAKYAMUNI COMING OUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN
Liang Kai, Southern Sung
He drags his bare feet
out of a cave
under a tree,
eyebrows
grown long with weeping
and hooknosed woe,
in ragged soft robes
wearing a fine beard,
unhappy hands
clasped to his naked breast —
humility is beatness
humility is beatness —
faltering
into the bushes by a stream,
all things inanimate
but his intelligence —
stands upright there
tho trembling:
Arhat
who sought Heaven
under a mountain of stone,
sat thinking
till he realized
the land of blessedness exists
in the imagination —
the flash come:
empty mirror —
how painful to be born again
wearing a fine beard,
reentering the world
a bitter wreck of a sage:
earth before him his only path.
We can see his soul,
he knows nothing
like a god:
shaken
meek wretch —
humility is beatness
before the absolute World.
NY Public Library 1953
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