II PINES ON A MOUNTAIN Red pine-trunks! Immutable pines! A Screen by Yeitoku Pillars upright under the grey sky! Pillars upright over the chasmed earth! Upon these snow-heights Your downward sloping branches Point toward the human world Remote and troubled. But here on the ultimate ramparts Of the winter hills, Your huge columns Rise toward bleak heaven Like an indomitable procession Of warriors, dark, green-crested, To whom the snows Are only wine and trumpets, Are only battle. The Wave Symphon III THE WAVE SYMPHONY A Screen by Sotatsu Around islands of jade and malachite And lapis-lazuli and jasper, Under golden clouds, Struggle the grey-gold waves. The waves are advancing, Swirling, eddying; the pale waves Are leaping into foam, and retreating And straining again until they seem not waves But gigantic crawling hands. The waves clutch at the clouds, The near and golden clouds; They rise in spires over the clouds, And over the pine-branch set against the clouds. And around the islands, Jasper and jade, Their rhythms circle and sweep and re-echo With hollow and foam-crest, Infinitely interlacing their orbits and cycles That join and unravel, and battle and answer, Crest to trough, foam-height to hollow, Peace drowning passion, and passion IV BUDDHA APPEARING FROM BEHIND MOUNTAINS A Painting by Choga Two hills meetTwo dark green hills. About their shoulders Silver mists cling. Slowly the gigantic Face of the Buddha In massive presence Looks over the hills. Tranquil his brow, unsmiling his lips; Filling the whole sky with his haloes of glory, Measureless peace sleeps on his golden forehead; Weighs on his eyes. Yet as I look It seems that his terrible hidden hands Even now are stirring To rend apart the hills— To divide the corrupt and cloven earth For the triumphal entry of his burning form. Arthur Davison Ficke |