Walking in Soseki's Snow Valley

Image: Kanenori

Snow Valley

by MUSŌ SOSEKI, translated by W. S. MERWIN AND SŌIKU SHIGEMATSU

Each drifting snowflake

             falls nowhere

                          but here and now

Under the settling flowers of ice

             the water is flowing

                          bright and clear

The cold stream

             splashes out

                          the Buddha’s words

Startling

             the stone tortoise

                          from its sleep

These poems in Narrative magazine are excerpted from Sun at Midnight: Poems and Letters (Copper Canyon Press), the first translation into English of the work of Muso Soseki.

Soseki was a thirteenth-century Zen roshi and founder of the rock garden. The poems are excellent reading for other poets, gardeners, and students of Zen.  

Musō Soseki (1275–1351), born ten years after Dante, became the most famous Zen monk of his time. He advised and taught several emperors, as well as more than thirteen thousand students. 

All on my own I’m happy

            in the unmapped landscape

                        inside the bottle

my only friend

            is this

                        wisteria cane

Last night

            we stayed up talking

                        so late

that I’m afraid

            I was overheard

                        by the empty sky

In his old age, Musō withdrew from court to devote himself to Buddha and to cultivate the Zen gardens for which he is remembered. At his death, he left behind an enormous body of poetry and prose. In honor of his profound influence on Japanese culture, he was renamed Musō Kokushi, “national Zen teacher,” by Emperor Go-Daigo.

Toki-no-Ge (Satori Poem)

Year after year

I dug in the earth

looking for the blue of heaven

only to feel

the pile of dirt

choking me

until once in the dead of night

I tripped on a broken brick

and kicked it into the air

and saw that without a thought

I had smashed the bones

of the empty sky

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