What quiet loneliness fills the autumn air.
As I lean on my staff, the wind turns cold.
A solitary village lies shrouded in mist...
by a country bridge a figure passes bound for home.

An old crow comes to roost in the ancient forest.
Lines of wild geese slant toward the horizon.
Only a monk in black robes remains
standing motionless before the river at twilight.

On the first day of the eighth month, I go into town to beg.
The doors of a thousand homes are flung open.
The smoke of a myriad hearths slants through the air.

Last night’s rain has washed the road clean
and an autumn wind rustles the wings on my staff.
I take my time begging. The universe is vast, without end.

A riot of fallen petals covers the deserted stairs,
the songs of lovely birds mingle in a gorgeous brocade.

Soft and languid, sunlight pours through my window.
A slender column of smoke floats above the open hearth.

It’s quiet, my little three-mat hut…
…the whole day long, not a soul to be seen.
I sit and meditate by my lonely window—
the only sound, the endlessly falling leaves.

Every season has its moon but this is the moon that I prize above all.
Mountains in autumn soar; waters are limpid.

In a cloudless sky stretching ten thousand leagues spins a solitary mirror.
Originally its brightness does not exist, nor do the objects it illumines.
When brightness and objects are forgotten, who is it that remains?

In the chill autumn air the heavens seem boundless.
I take my staff and roam the mountain’s green forested slopes.
Everywhere I look, the world is vast, clear, without a trace of dust.
I see only the autumn moon growing in brightness.

Who is it tonight watching this moon?
Who is the autumn moon shining upon?
Autumn after autumn, it goes on shining.
Men stand before it and stare, yet enlightenment passes them by.

The Buddha’s sermon on the Vulture Peak,
the Six Patriarchs pointing to the mind—
all these reveal the wonders of moonlight.

Immersed in my poem beneath the moon, the night has deepened.
In every eddy of the deep-flowing stream
the moon appears, as if in a forest of dewdrops.

The sun sets and all living things cease to stir.
I, too, close my brushwood gate.
A few crickets begin to chirp...
the color of grasses and trees has faded.

Burning stick after stick of incense
I meditate through the long, autumn night.
When my body gets cold, I put on more clothes.