more on account of his attitude toward life’s calamity than for the Hokku poem itself. Hokushi did not study poetry in vain, I should say, when his own mind could keep serene like the falling flowers, while seeing his house burn to ashes. That is the real poetry in action. With that action as a background, his poem, although it is slight in fact, bursts into a sudden light and dignity.
Indeed the main question is: what is the real poetry of action for which silence is the language? To say the real poet is a part of Nature does no justice, because he is able more often to understand Nature better through the very reason of his not being a part of Nature itself. It is his greatness to soar out of Nature and still not ever to forget her in one word, to make himself art itself. And how does he attain his own aim? Is it by the true conception of Taoism, the doctrine of Cosmic change or Mood of the Universe, of the Great Infinite or Transition? Or is it through the Zennism, of whose founder, Dharuma, I wrote once as follows?
“Thou lurest one into the presence of tree and hill;
Thou blendest with the body of Nature old;
List, Nature with the human shadow and song,
With thee she seems so near and sure to me,
I love and understand her more truly through thee;
Oh magic of meditation, witchery of silence,–
Language for which secret has no power!
Oh vastness of the soul of night and death,
Where time and pains cease to exist.”
