I live on the mountain
no one knows.
Among white clouds
eternal perfect silence
Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems, no. XCV (trans. J.P. Seaton)
When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
& I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain."
Gary Snyder, Cold Mountain Poems 24
5 comments:
The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deem’d it meeter
To carry off the latter.
The Welsh Marches weren't always calm and bucolic :-)
Crikey... I had to look that up -- I thought it must be Chesterton or someone of that ilk, amazed to see it's Thomas Love Peacock. I read "Nightmare Abbey" years ago, and that wasn't very good, either.
Sheep-wise, there's still a fair bit of raiding and rustling going on -- entire flocks can vanish into a (big) van overnight, and head off for Birmingham. Fewer heads on poles, though.
Mike
I always get the urge to toot on a kazoo in the quiet bits of C16th polyphony.
Less plonking:
But for you the Cuillin would be
an exact and serrated blue rampart
girdling with its march-wall
all that is in my barbarous heart
Sorley MacLean
PS: Were the gods of photographic grant giving ever to smile on me with sufficient beneficence, I would embark on a tour of Asian holy mountains.
Veriword: anesupec, the Mayan god of non-prescription medicines.
Struan,
I quite like to toot a kazoo myself. We passed up the Pergolesi Stabat Mater in Winchester Cathedral today in favour of tea and hot cross buns. Good call, I say.
N.B. it may not be quite clear from these JPEGs, but these "mountains" are entirely made of cloud -- there are no peaks quite so impressive for some miles. The one in the bottom picture is simply floating away.
Those Asian holy mountains turn up all over the place...
Mike
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