Snyder leaned back on the couch, closed his eyes, and recited a famous haiku by Kobayashi Issa, who wrote in Japan about 200 years ago. “Tsuyu no ya wa/ tsuyu no yo nagara/ sarinagara.” Then he translated: “This dewdrop world/ is but a dewdrop world/ and yet. … ”
“If you gloss the poem, it means, ‘This impermanent world is just an impermanent world, and yet. … ‘ That ‘and yet’ is what people do. They try to leave something behind. They take care of their children. They make art! And that makes life hugely interesting.”
“Morality is bringing it back out in the way you live, through personal example and responsible action, ultimately toward the true community (sangha) of “all beings.â€
This last aspect means, for me, supporting any cultural and economic revolution that moves clearly toward a free, international, classless world. It means using such means as civil disobedience, outspoken criticism, protest, pacifism, voluntary poverty and even gentle violence if it comes to a matter of restraining some impetuous redneck.”
If animals wrote things down, who would you rather hear a poem by - a raccoon or a possum?
A raccoon’s poem is alert and inquisitive, and amazes you by what a mess it makes. A possum’s poem seems sort of slow and dumb at first, but then it rolls over. When you get close to it, it spits in your eye.
A Walk
Sunday the only day we don’t work:
Mules farting around the meadow,
Murphy fishing,
The tent flaps in the warm
Early sun: I’ve eaten breakfast and I’ll
Take a walk
To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,
Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders
Up the rock throat three miles
Puite Creek –
In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country
Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,
The clear sky. Deer tracks.
Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,
Lunch tied to belt,
I stemmed up a crack and almost fell
But rolled out safe on a ledge
and ambled on.
Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone
Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.
Craggy west end of Benson Lake — after edging
Past dark creek pools on a long white slope –
Lookt down in the ice-black lake
lined with cliff
From far above: deep shimmering trout.
A lone duck in a gunsightpass
steep side hill
Through slide-aspen and talus, to the east end,
Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream
Into camp. At last.
By the rusty three-year-
Ago left-behind cookstove
Of the old trail crew,
Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch.
~ Gary Snyder
We’re going to see him speak at the Fitzgerald Theater tonight. Oh joy.
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