Cold Mountain

It’s debated whether or not a single Cold Mountain existed. There is only one historical report of someone meeting him. It’s more likely Cold Mountain was the sole attribution given to poems written by two people on Mt. Tiantai. Between them, a wife and child were left behind when Cold Mountain ran off into the wilderness. He spent the rest of his life scrawling poems on rocks and tree trunks or even the walls of houses whenever he’d come to town and collect scraps of food left in a bamboo tube outside the temple. Whether one person or one hundred wrote the Cold Mountain poems, they are unmistakably mocking, angry, self-pitying, arrogant, and insane. Then they are the opposite of those qualities. And I am someone reading them in an air-conditioned desert room with a plate of food in the microwave. In paintings and stories, Cold Mountain is always laughing.

When I’m in the village where I live,
people praise me as incomparable.
Yesterday I was in Castle Town,
and even dogs looked at me askance.
Or people sneered at the width of my pants
and talked about the length of my jacket.
Stab the sparrowhawk in the eyes,
and sparrows will dance, all bold.

*

Yesterday I saw a tree by a river—
it was crushed beyond belief.
There were a few fragments of the trunk
with countless hatchet scars.
Frost had stripped the leaves of yellow,
waves stabbing its withered roots.
This is what happens to what’s alive—
there’s no point in hating the Universe.

People ask the way to Cold Mountain
but roads don’t reach Cold Mountain
in summer the ice doesn’t melt
and the morning fog is too dense
how did someone like me arrive
our minds are not the same
if they were the same
you would be here

*

An old lady who lives to the east
got rich a few years ago
before poorer than me
she now mocks my poverty
she laughs that I’m behind
I laugh that she’s ahead
it seems we can’t stop laughing
from the east and from the west

*

A man who lives on rose-colored clouds
shunned the usual haunts for a home
every season is equally dead
summer is just like fall
a dark stream always babbles
a towering pine wind sighs
sitting here less than one day
he forgets a whole lifetime of sorrow

*

Birth and death are decreed
wealth and fame are bestowed by Heaven
these are the sayings of the ancients
I’m not passing on lies
geniuses all die young
fools enjoy long lives
stupid creatures are rich
and brilliant scholars are broke