Han-shan

My mind is like the autumn moon
Shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me, how shall I explain?¹

Han-shan (or Hanshan) was an early Chinese Buddhist poet writing during the T’ang dynasty in 800 or 900AD. He was a wealthy and well-educated man who, having missed out on a senior government appointment, withdrew from the active public world to live a simple life in the mountains.

Despite the vast cultural distance, this poem by Han-shan seems relevant to my current work. At the most obvious level, and not at all metaphorically, I am concerned with the moon and our backyard pool. And if not with the moon and the pool, then with dusk on the escarpment, with clouds and dwindling light, and with minor activities such as walking and running. And in the same way as Han-shan, I am uncertain about these images and this space of experience, not, however, because they fail as metaphors of spiritual clarity, but because they signal an awkward romanticism and quietism. Or perhaps a recourse to a very conventional order of poetry, which nonetheless deeply holds me – although I do my best to approach it lightly, to tie it to the ordinary and prosaic, to non-descript leisure, suburban rooftops and weed-infested trails.