Tao Yuanming: Returning to Fields and Gardens

 https://poets.org/poem/returning-fields-and-gardens-i

Returning to Fields and Gardens (I)

Tao Yuanming

Translated from the Mandarin by Arthur Sze

When I was young, I did not fit in
with others, and simply loved the hills and mountains.
By mistake, I fell into the dusty net,
and before I knew it, it was thirty years!
The caged bird longs for the old forest.
The fish in the pond misses the old depths.
I cultivate land along the southern wilds,
and, keeping to simplicity, return to fields and garden.
Ten acres now surround my house;
it is thatched, and has eight, nine rooms.
Elms and willows shade the back eaves.
Peach and plum trees are lined out the front hall.
The distant village is hazy, hazy: and
slender, slender, the smoke hanging over houses.
Dogs bark in the deep lane, and a rooster
crows on top of a mulberry tree.
My house untouched by the dust of the world—
ample leisure in these bare rooms.
I was held so long inside a narrow bird-
cage, but now, at last, can return to nature.

From The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry by Arthur Sze. Copyright © 2024 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Simplicity & unhurriedness -

Pema Chödrön that also emphasizes the simplicity of being rather than doing, from her book "The Wisdom of No Escape":

"The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest. The honesty and gentleness are essential. And this is the simplicity of practice: just being with ourselves as we are."

Pema Chödrön underscores the importance of simplicity in mindfulness practice by encouraging us to be with ourselves as we are, without rushing to change or fix anything. It's about gently allowing ourselves to be, rather than constantly doing or striving.

"A Leisurely Life"

"In the quiet of the evening, I sit alone,
Surrounded by the sounds of nature.
The flowers bloom and the birds sing,
And I find solace in their company.
With no ambitions to chase or burdens to bear,
I embrace the ease of a simple life.
The pleasures of a leisurely day are enough,
For I am content in the moment’s gentle embrace."

This poem reflects Su T'ung Pao’s embrace of a simple, unhurried lifestyle. The imagery of flowers and birds symbolizes a harmonious relationship with nature, and the poet’s contentment with a leisurely life highlights his appreciation for the simplicity and ease of being present in the moment.

Mary Oliver's 'When I am among the Trees'

 

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Fernando Pessoa - assorted verse

Goodreads reviewer below quotes Fernando Pessoa...paying homage, epressing affinity. The poem quoted below is lovely.

 Sidharth Vardhan rated it 

it was amazing

Shelves: poems, 4-europe

Best book I have read this year. Pessoa is the best poet in the world. The number of characters allowed for goodreads reviews are too few to share all the poems i want to, so here are just a couple:

"Better the flight of the bird that passes and leaves no trace
Than the passage of the animal, recorded in the ground.
The bird passes and is forgotten, which is how it should be.
The animal, no longer there and so of no further use,
Uselessly shows it was there.
Remembrance is a betrayal of Nature,
Because yesterday’s Nature isn’t Nature.
What was is nothing, and to remember is not to see.
Pass by, bird, pass, and teach me to pass!"

"A row of trees in the distance, toward the slope...
But what is a row of trees? There are just trees.
“Row” and the plural “trees” are names, not things.
Unhappy human beings, who put everything in order,
Draw lines from thing to thing,
Place labels with names on absolutely real trees,
And plot parallels of latitude and longitude
On the innocent earth itself, which is so much greener and full
of flowers!"


"In this way or that way,
As it may happen or not happen,
Sometimes succeeding in saying what
I think And at other times saying it badly and with things mixed in,
I keep writing my poems, inadvertently,
As if writing were not something requiring action,
As if writing were something that happens to me
In the same way that the sun reaches me from outside.
I try to say what I feel
Without thinking about what I feel.
I try to place words right next to my idea
So that I won’t need a corridor Of thought leading to words.
I don’t always manage to feel what I know I should feel.
Only very slowly does my thought swim across the river,
Weighed down as it is by the suit men forced it to wear.
I try to shed what I’ve learned, I try to forget the way I was taught to remember,
To scrape off the paint that was painted on my senses,
To uncrate my true emotions,
To step out of all my wrapping and be myself—not Alberto
Caeiro
But a human animal created by Nature."

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

by 

Fernando Pessoa,

 

Richard Zenith (Translator)

Diane Ackerman: School Prayer

 

Mary Oliver's 'Wild Geese'

 Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-poem read by Hugh Byrne on Dec 6, 2020

The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.


I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. 

I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. 

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Look deep, deep into nature, and the...

Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~ Albert Einstein

On Nature

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Binsey Poplars (felled 1879)

Binsey Poplars

(Felled 1879)

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins