Poems for July

Wind among the Pines

The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.

Shell

Nothing, nothing at all
is born,
dies, the shell says again
and again
from the depths of hollowness.
Its body
swept off by tide – so what?
It sleeps
in sand, drying in sunlight,
bathing
in moonlight. Nothing to do
with sea
or anything else. Over
and over
it vanishes with the wave.

Shinkichi Takahashi (1901 – 1987). Translated by Lucien Stryk & Takashi Ikemoto

Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi (Grove Press New York:1986)

Two good poems for walking with, especially in those places around the coast where the trees still grow right down to the shore. Merkland Wood, Kings Cross – places full of the present tense.

IM