A Monk
Striking his bell day after day
a monk remains in his pale grey deep dream.
The traces and shadows of so many past years
appear in memory like a patch of incense smoke
that spreads everywhere in the old temple.
The remains of sorrow stay in the censer
together with the grief of devout men and women.
boredom meanders perpetually
round and round in the sutras.
Sleepy words trickle from his mouth,
a man talking in his dream.
His head nods along with his knocking
of the wooden fish,
both so empty yet so heavy.
Stroke after stroke, the hills and rivers
are lulled to sleep.
The hills and rivers sleep lazily in the afterglow,
as he finished tolling the funeral bell
of another day.
1931, The Han Garden
Pien Chih-lin
Pien Chihlin (born 1910) came from the Chinese coast near Shanghai, to enroll
at Peking University in 1929. He loved the ancient city, yet his verses were not
choked in its dust. Some of the passages seem obscure, but most of his poems
breathe a clear, pure air. They represent life through a series of impressions, often
quiet but never trivial as they may seem at first reading.
--Anthology of Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, 1963
Edited by Kai-yu Hsu
- Wooden Fish: hollowed wooden box which a monk strikes with a stick while
chanting sutras. It owes its name to an old legend about about some original
Buddhist sutras being swallowed by a marine monster on their way to China.
Striking the wooden fish therefore, becomes a gesture demanding the monster
to disgorge the Word.
