Blind Man With A Lantern (Sengai), Sonnet # 447

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.








Sengai! Is the lantern lit?

Granted, your point stabs us with wit.

An old parable, forgotten

And obvious, like a dark cave,

Empty and dry, but not rotten,

Composed by a man deadly brave.

The blind man taps his walking stick

And that may be his burning wick.

To see is to know it is not

To see but to know but a jot

To see in our thought’s darkest blot

Seeing that is and that is not.

Tap, tap, tap, my old frowning friend.

Only you see beyond the bend. 

Hanshan and Shih-te (Sengai Gibon), Sonnet #377

Giggling Shih-te and the scribbler Hanshan

Scrub the scree and pebbles on Cold Mountain.

Shih-te moves them aside with his light broom,

Then brushes them back again to make room

For the emptiness between each small stone.

Dust rises like ghosts, silent and alone.

He laughs, delighted at the nothing he has done.

Hanshan washes each gem, rock, and boulder

With a brush dripping with sticky black ink.

If he can, he will make the mountain think

Thoughts not the oldest, but even older.

The work drives needles into his shoulder.

He calls to Shih-te, tells him of his pain.

Needles broomed, all is soon washed clean by rain.

Stone Formation, Sonnet #367

 

The experience of enlightenment

Is the arrangement of a few beach stones

On an old wooden deck, not an event,

Not a vision, not a handful of koans.

Ikkyu had this moment of insight

On hearing the song of a soldier's slight

That drove two girls into a nunnery,

Leaving their general his gunnery:

“Sixty blows from my master’s stick would serve

As well to achieve what I don’t deserve.”

These four stones have been carelessly arranged,

Each chosen for its one flat edge to rest

And have in wind and rain remained unchanged.

In their presence I’m an unwanted guest.

Note: Much of Ikkyu’s life is apocryphal, though

the story of his enlightenment upon hearing the

blind man’s song about two women ill-treated

by a general is a central part of his legend. The

quote I attribute to him is consistent with the
legend, though partly my invention.