The Beauty of Spring Blocks My Way

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Spring comes slowly and quietly

to allow Winter to withdraw

slowly and quietly.

The color of the mountain afternoon

is tinged with nostalgia.

The terrible war flower

has left her footprints-

countless petals of separation and death

in white and violet.

Very tenderly, the wound opens itself in the depths of my heart.

Its color is the color of blood,

its nature the nature of separation.

The beauty of Spring blocks my way.

How could I find another path up the mountain?

I suffer so. My soul is frozen.

My heart vibrates like the fragile string of a lute

left out in a stormy night.

Yes, it is really there. Spring has really come.

But the mourning is heard

clearly, unmistakably,

in the wonderful sounds of the birds.

The morning mist is already born.

The breeze of Spring in its song

expresses both my love and my despair.

The cosmos is so indifferent. Why?

To the harbor, I came alone,

and now I leave alone.

There are so many paths leading to the homeland.

They all talk to me in silence. I invoke the Absolute.

Spring has come

to every corner of the ten directions.

Its, alas, is only the song

of departure.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, 1951