Snow Garden

by Muso Soseki

English version by W. S. Merwin
Original Language Japanese

Flowers with six petals
     have covered the whole ground
          and frozen everywhere
Heaven and earth have disappeared
     into this one
          pure color
A pine and a cedar
     by the stone stairs
          are still green
Shen-kuan
     must have lost sight of the mind
          of the great vessel

-- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu

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Snow Garden