Some poems I enjoyed reading this afternoon, as translated by Coleman Barks. There is information about the author after the poems themselves.
************************************************** Even the stars can be measured, their arrangments and influences. Her body can be lovingly touched, but not her deep longings. Those cannot be understood by science. ************************************************** The ink of lovesongs washes off in the rain, but the love itself, that which cannot be written down, stays inside *here* ************************************************** I listen intently to what my teacher says but beneath that concentration my loving slips out of the room to be with you. ************************************************** In meditation, the face of my teacher does not come to me very clearly, but your face does, smiling one way, then smiling another. ************************************************** If I could meditate as deeply on the sacred texts as I do on you, I would clearly be enlightened in this lifetime. ************************************************** Your stallion trots on the sllppery ice, over deep-frozen and nearly-frozen water. When you move toward the beauty of a new lover, be careful that your secret legs don't scatter and fall! ************************************************** The old dog at the gate has a more subtle soul than most human beings. Please don't tell them how I left at dusk and came back in at dawn! ************************************************** Lover waiting in my bed to give me your soft, sweet body, do you mean well? What will you take off me, besides my clothes? ************************************************** At night, I'm so in love I can't sleep, and each day fills with the fatigue of not having you again. ************************************************** Wanting this landlord's daughter is wanting the topmost peach. ************************************************** The moon lifts over the hill edge. Inside, I see you smiling. ************************************************** Back when I was lucky, I could hoist a prayerflag, and some well-bred young woman would invite me home. ************************************************** She shone her whole smiling face at the crowd in the tavern. Then, from the delicate corners of her eyes, she spoke love-secrets to me. ************************************************** I'm young, so with a slight smile you have me. But what I want is a word from the stream of your being. ************************************************** I often see my lost lover in dreams. I will ask a shaman to search in there and bring her back to me. ************************************************** We've had our short walk together, this joy. Let's hope we meet early in the next life, as young lovers. ************************************************** While I live in the monastery palace, I am Ridzin Tsangyang Gyatso, honored in this lineage. When I roam the streets in Lhasa, and down in the valley to Shol, I am the wildman, Dangyang Wangpo, who has many lovers. ************************************************** Pure snow-water from the holy mountain, Dew off the rare Naga Vajra grass. These essences make a nectar which is fermented by one who is incarnated as a maiden. Her cup's contents can protect you from rebirth in a lower form, if it is tasted in the state of awareness it deserves. ************************************************** I know her body's softness but not her love. I draw figures in sand to measure great distances through the sky. ************************************************** These poems are actually songs, written spontaneously by a 17th-century poet who called himself the Turquoise Bee. His real name was Ridzin ("treasure") Tsangyang ("having a voice like God's") Gyatso (the lineage), also known as the Sixth Dalai Lama. The Great Fifth died suddenly, without fully predicting where his next incarnation would be born, so he was not enthroned as the Dalai Lama until he was 14. And although he passed all of the 30-day tests to indicate that he was the true tulku of the Great Fifth, he never quite "worked out" as Dalai Lama the way the monks expected him to. He spent his days in the Potala palace, writing scholarly works about Buddhism and presiding over the spiritual and mundane affairs of Tibet, but he spent his night in Shol- town (Lhasa's red light district) drinking and carousing with the gals. And writing spontaneous poem-songs like these. The songs were still sung on the streets in Tibet until the 1950s, when the Chinese outlawed street singing. I like his poetry because it has the majesty of the best writers of koans and haiku, but I like *him* because I identify with his lifestyle. Like him, I paid my dues learning the ins and outs of spiritual thought and the arts of meditation. Like him I make my living during the day writing esoteric treatises -- his on Buddhism, me on the equally arcane subject of artificial intelligence. But we both spend our evenings in cafes and taverns, and we both have an eye for the ladies. And we both see in the ladies JUST as much inspiration as we see in any scripture or sitting meditation. That's probably why I stole his nom de plume for my own. I hope that I haven't accrued any bad karma for that.