Zen Poetry
Zen Poetry usually consists of 3 or 4 lines. The first line contains a beginning phrase. The second line turns to a different subject. Then the third line brings the first two lines together.
Zen Poems from The Essential Basho
Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams.
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Eaten alive by
lice and fleas -- now the horse
beside my pillow pees.
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Along the roadside,
blossoming wild roses
in my horse’s mouth.
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Even that old horse
is something to see this
snow-covered morning.
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On the white poppy,
a butterfly’s torn wing
is a keepsake.
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The bee emerging
from deep within the peony
departs reluctantly.
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Crossing long fields,
frozen in its saddle,
my shadow creeps by.
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A mountain pheasant cry
fills me with fond longing for
father and mother.
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Slender, so slender
its stalk bends under dew --
little yellow flower.
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New Year’s first snow -- ah --
just barely enough to tilt
the daffodil.
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In this warm spring rain,
tiny leaves are sprouting
from the eggplant seed.
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O bush warblers!
Now you’ve shit all over
my rice cake on the porch.
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For those who proclaim
they’ve grown weary of children,
there are no flowers.
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Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die.
From The Essential Basho, Translated by Sam Hamill. Published by Shambala in Boston, 1999.