■ 🕑 1. Poetry thread
│  Post poems you like, or poems you write!
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│  Pro tip: you can use subject/author fields for the poems, too.
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├─■ 🕑 2. To my teacher
│   An old grave hidden away at the foot of a deserted hill,
│   Overrun with rank weeks growing unchecked year after year;
│   There is no one left to tend the tomb,
│   And only an occasional woodcutter passes by.
│   Once I was his pupil, a youth with shaggy hair,
│   Learning deeply from him by the Narrow River.
│   One morning I set off on my solitary journey
│   And the years passed between us in silence.
│   Now I have returned to find him at rest here;
│   How can I honor his departed spirit?
│   I pour a dipper of pure water over his tombstone
│   And offer a silent prayer.
│   The sun suddenly disappears behind the hill
│   And I'm enveloped by the roar of the wind in the pines.
│   I try to pull myself away but cannot;
│   A flood of tears soaks my sleeves. 
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├─■ 🕑 3. My cracked wooden bowl
│   This treasure was discovered in a bamboo thicket --
│   I washed the bowl in a spring and then mended it.
│   After morning meditation, I take my gruel in it;
│   At night, it serves me soup or rice.
│   Cracked, worn, weather-beaten, and misshapen
│   But still of noble stock!
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│   Midsummer --
│   I walk about with my staff.
│   Old farmers spot me
│   And call me over for a drink.
│   We sit in the fields
│   using leaves for plates.
│   Pleasantly drunk and so happy
│   I drift off peacefully
│   Sprawled out on a paddy bank.
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│   How can I possibly sleep
│   This moonlit evening?
│   Come, my friends,
│   Let's sing and dance
│   All night long.
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│   Stretched out,
│   Tipsy,
│   Under the vast sky:
│   Splendid dreams
│   Beneath the cherry blossoms.
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│   Wild roses,
│   Plucked from fields
│   Full of croaking frogs:
│   Float them in  your wine
│   And enjoy every minute! 
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├─■ 🕑 4. Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker
│ │  Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
│ │  And smoke to pass the time away
│ │  My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
│ │  Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
│ │  It teaches me that very like
│ │  Am I myself unto my pipe.
│ │  
│ │  Like me this pipe, so fragrant burning,
│ │  Is made of naught but earthen clay;
│ │  To earth I too shall be returning,
│ │  And cannot halt my slow decay.
│ │  My well used pipe, now cracked and broken,
│ │  Of mortal life is but a token.
│ │  
│ │  No stain, the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
│ │  It remains white. Thus do I know
│ │  That when to death's call I must harken
│ │  My body, too, all pale will grow.
│ │  To black beneath the sod 'twill turn,
│ │  Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.
│ │  
│ │  Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
│ │  Behold then instantaneously,
│ │  The smoke off into thin air going,
│ │  'Til naught but ash is left to see.
│ │  Man's fame likewise away will burn
│ │  And unto dust his body turn.
│ │  
│ │  How oft it happens when one's smoking,
│ │  The tamper's missing from its shelf,
│ │  And one goes with one's finger poking
│ │  Into the bowl and burns oneself.
│ │  If in the pipe such pain doth dwell
│ │  How hot must be the pains of Hell!
│ │  
│ │  Thus o'er my pipe in contemplation
│ │  Of such things - I can constantly
│ │  Indulge in fruitful meditation,
│ │  And so, puffing contentedly,
│ │  On land, at sea, at home, abroad,
│ │  I smoke my pipe and worship God. 
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│ └─■ 🕑 5. 
│     that was btw, J.S. Bach: So oft ich meine Tobakspfeife...
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└─■ 🕑 6. 
    Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
    The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
    Although its light is wide and great,
    The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
    The whole moon and the entire sky
    Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.