The Long Walk Home: a Poem and a Translation

by Joe Lamport

Ueno Jakugen

Now here’s a Great thing about An artist’s love For the universe: It’s wild and Indiscriminate And it can be Expressed in An infinitude Of ways

It can hold Dominion In the slightest Change of An orchid’s pallor From day to day And when you Open yourself To the world’s majesty You hear it too In the bird’s Vigorous chirp And the raindrops Tapping on your shoulder

So I’ll let the first Nen Take care of itself tonight On the long walk home While the rest of me Prepares to gets blitzed On bourbon Scribbling notes Smoking hash and riding Kondratiev’s long wave Out towards oblivion

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Below is Lamport’s Chinese-to-English translation of an untitled poem by Han Shan, the hermit of Cold Mountain, one of the great hermit tramps of the pre-modern era:

It’s funny how Cold Mountain path Proceeds along Without a trace of Horses and carts

As streams Come together It’s hard to remember All their twists and turns And the layers of peaks That loom in the distance Unknowable

The dew weeps Upon a thousand Blades of grass And the wind Moans in sync With the pines

Here the path leads To a bewildering place Where each form asks Of its shadow From whence It has come

可笑寒山道 而无车马踪

联谿难记曲 叠嶂不知重

泣露千般草 吟风一样松

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Joe Lamport is a writer, poet, and translator of classical Chinese poetry.