旅懐 Thoughts on a Jouney

 

 月華星彩坐来収 

   獄色江声暗結愁

  半寄燈前十年事

 一時和雨到心頭

　                          作：杜筍鶴

　                               書：金安菱雅

The moon’s light and the glitter of the stars gather as if dozing upon the seat,

the color of the mountains and the sound of the flowing river darkly knot grief within the heart.

At midnight, before the lamplight, I look back on the state of these past ten years,

and for a spell the sound of the rain softly echoes all the way into my heart.

                                                                                                    Poem:Du  Xunhe 

                                                                                                    Calligraphy: Ryoga Kaneyasu

Du Xunhe was a poet of the late Tang dynasty. Having failed the imperial examinations many times, he became a wandering poet whose travels were his way of life.

In his poem “Traveling Thoughts” he layers the pure light of stars and moon over the mountains sinking into darkness to express both the loneliness of his own circumstances and the quiet, inward-descending state of his heart.

The beauty of the starry sky, and the loneliness that nestles beside it—

The AI selected poems that resemble Du Xunhe's “Traveling Thoughts”: Seamus Heaney’s “Postscript,They are poems by Japan’s Bashō, Iran’s Hafez, and Germany’s Goethe... For me, it was an unexpected introduction to these poets. I will read them. There is a sense of a new encounter waiting.

Across time and cultures, people have looked up at the same starry nights and moonlit skies, and have felt their hearts tremble in the same way.

Their beauty still, even now, quietly continues to cast questions into the inner lives of those who know it.

And yet, why is it that humanity tries so little to understand one another?