Hanshan (poet) - Poetry

Poetry

Hanshan's poetry consists of Chinese verse, in 3, 5, or 7 character lines; never shorter than 4 lines, and never longer than 34 lines. The language is marked by the use of more colloquial Medieval Vernacular Sinitic than almost any other Tang poet. The poems can be seen to fall into three categories: the biographical poems about his life before he arrived at Cold Mountain; the religious and political poems, generally critical of conventional wisdom and those who embrace it; and the transcendental poems, about his sojourn at Cold Mountain. They are notable for their straightforwardness, which contrasts sharply with the cleverness and intricateness that marked typical Tang Dynasty poetry.

Red Pine poem 283:

Mister Wang the Graduate

laughs at my poor prosody.

I don't know a wasp's waist

much less a crane's knee.

I can't keep my flat tones straight,

all my words come helter-skelter.

I laugh at the poems he writes-

a blind man's songs about the sun!

(All these terms refer to ways a poem could be defective according to the rigid poetic structures then prevalent.)

Thematically, Hanshan draws heavily on Buddhist and Taoist themes, often remarking on life's short and transient nature, and the necessity of escape through some sort of transcendence. He varies and expands on this theme, sometimes speaking of Mahayana Buddhism's 'Great Vehicle', and other times of Taoist ways and symbols like cranes.

The following poem begins with the imagery of the burning house and the three carts from the Parable of the Burning House found in The Lotus Sutra, then ends with typical Zen and Taoist imagery of freedom from conceptualizations.

Red Pine poem 253:

Children, I implore you

get out of the burning house now.

Three carts await outside

to save you from a homeless life.

Relax in the village square

before the sky, everything's empty.

No direction is better or worse,

East just as good as West.

Those who know the meaning of this

are free to go where they want.

This mixed influence is probably due to the high preponderance of Taoists and Buddhists in the same area. The eminent Taoist Ge Hong acclaimed Mount Tiantai as 'the perfect place for practicing the arts of immortality,' which is probably also why so many Buddhist temples were established in the vicinity as well.

Red Pine poem 13:

"Brothers share five districts;

father and sons three states."

To learn where the wild ducks fly

follow the white-hare banner!

Find a magic melon in your dream!

Steal a sacred orange from the palace!

Far away from your native land

swim with fish in a stream!

Many poems display a deep concern for humanity, which in his view stubbornly refuses to look ahead, and short-sightedly indulges in all manner of vice, like eating animal flesh, piling up sins 'high as Mount Sumeru'. But he holds out hope that people may yet be saved; 'Just the other day/ a demon became a Bodhisattva.'

Red Pine poem 18:

I spur my horse past ruins;

ruins move a traveler's heart.

The old parapets high and low

the ancient graves great and small,

the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed,

the steady sound of giant trees.

But what I lament are the common bones

unnamed in the records of immortals.

While Hanshan eschewed fancy techniques and obscure erudition, his poems are still highly evocative at times: Red Pine poem 106:

The layered bloom of hills and streams

Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds

mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,

dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.

On my feet are traveling shoes,

my hand holds an old vine staff.

Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-

what more could I want in that land of dreams?

Following is the same poem translated by Wandering Poet:

Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams

Blue green vistas locked in white clouds

The mist makes my bandanna wet

Dew coats my grass cape

My feet climb in straw sandals

In my hand an old wooden stick

When I gaze down again on the dusty world

It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me

He is hard to pin down religiously. Chan concepts and terminology sometimes appear in his work. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

High on the mountain top

I can see to every horizon

Sitting alone where no one knows

A lone moon is reflected in the cold stream

The moon is not in the stream

The moon is in the sky

I am singing this song

In this song there is no Zen

But he criticized the Buddhists at Tiantai, and he directed criticism at Taoists as well, having had no problem bringing Taoist scriptural quotations, and Taoist language when describing his mountains, into his poems. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

I see the top of Cold Mountain

Alone high above the rest of the peaks

Wind rustles the pines and bamboo

The moon and the tides come and go

I look down far below the green mountain

I discuss Tao with the clouds

I happily enjoy the mountains and waters

My whole being admires the teachings of Tao

Yet, he does not mince words, but tells us precisely where to find the path to Heaven. The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

When people look for the road in the clouds

The cloud road disappears

The mountains are tall and steep

The streams are wide and still

Green mountains ahead and behind

White clouds to east and west

If you want to find the cloud road

Seek it within

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

Even with the fastest ship

Or riding a thousand mile horse

You cannot reach my home

People say the place is secluded and wild

A rock cave deep in the mountains

Clouds and thunder all day long

I am not Confucius

My words you will not understand

Red Pine poem 117:

I deplore this vulgar place

where demons dwell with worthies.

They say they're the same,

but is the Tao impartial?

A fox might ape a lion's mien

and claim the disguise is real,

but once ore enters the furnace,

we soon see if it's gold or base.

Red Pine poem 246:

I recently hiked to a temple in the clouds

and met some Taoist priests.

Their star caps and moon caps askew

they explained they lived in the wild.

I asked them the art of transcendence;

they said it was beyond compare,

and called it the peerless power.

The elixir meanwhile was the secret of the gods

and that they were waiting for a crane at death,

or some said they'd ride off on a fish.

Afterwards I thought this through

and concluded they were all fools.

Look at an arrow shot into the sky-

how quickly it falls back to earth.

Even if they could become immortals,

they would be like cemetery ghosts.

Meanwhile the moon of our mind shines bright.

How can phenomena compare?

As for the key to immortality,

within ourselves is the chief of spirits.

Don't follow Lords of the Yellow Turban

persisting in idiocy, holding onto doubts.

The following poem is attributed to Han-shan's friend, Shih-te. But Wandering Poet recognizes and translates it as authored by Han-shan:

The higher the trail the steeper it grows

Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs

The stone bridge is slippery with green moss

Cloud after cloud keeps flying by

Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk

The moon shines down on a bright pool

I climb the highest peak once more

To wait where the lone crane flies

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet. In this poem you hear the strong, clear voice of Han-shan, unaffected by the many years:

Old and sick, more than one hundred years

Face haggard, hair white, I’m happy to still live in the mountains

A cloth covered phantom watching the years flow by

Why envy people with clever ways of living?

The following poem is translated by Wandering Poet:

I sit cross-legged on the rock

The valleys and streams are cold and damp

Sitting quietly is beautiful

The cliffs are lost in mist and fog

I rest happily in this place

At dusk the tree shadows are low

I look into my mind

A lotus emerges from the dark mud

Red Pine's poem 307:

Whoever has Cold Mountain's poems

is better off than those with sutras.

Write them up on your screen

and read them from time to time.

Following is the same poem translated by Wandering Poet

If you have Cold Mountain poems in your house

They are better for you than sutras

Hang them up where you can see them

Read them and read them again