Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/316
Poems in Chinese
by Buddhist Monks
When the Japanese Zen priest Mugaku Sogen (1226–1286) was in China and threatened by invading Mongol troops, he composed a four-line poem. Years later another Zen priest, Sesson Yūbai (1290–1347), when he was in prison and threatened with death, took Mugaku’s poem and, using each line as the opening verse of a new poem, composed the following:
Through all Heaven and Earth, no ground to plant my single staff;
Yet is there a place to hide this body where no trace may be found.
At midnight will the wooden man mount his steed of stone
To crash down ten thousand walls of encircling iron.
In the nothingness of man I delight, and of all being,
A thousand worlds complete in my little cage.
I forget sin, demolish my heart, and in enlightenment rejoice;
Who tells me that the fallen suffer in Hell’s bonds?
Awful is the three-foot sword of the Great Yüan,[1]
Sparkling with cold frost over ten thousand miles.
Though the skull be dry, these eyes shall see again.
Flawless is my white gem, priceless as a kingdom.
Like lightning it flashes through the shadows, severing the spring wind;
The God of Nothingness bleeds crimson, streaming.
I tremble at the soaring heights of Mount Sumera;[2]
I will dive, I will leap into the stem of the lotus.
Sesson Yūbai