charles mugel

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”

John Keats's Grave, Rome

© 2010-2015 China - Japan

A slower pace, a somewhat slower pace will do.
Of a sudden, should it start to rain,
let yourself get soaked.
An old friend, the rain.

One thing alone is beautiful: setting off.
The world's too vast
to live in a single place,
or three or four.

Walk on and on
until the sun sets,
with your old accomplice,
shadow, late as ever.
If the day clouds over,
go on anyway
regardless.

KO UN

© 2017 Ladakh, India

Next to God

My place is the greatest wonder of this universe

The vast sea of mountains 

Covered in the thick blanket of white

Proudly displaying its might

The color of blue that span the entire sky

Splashed with sparse clouds of white

The countless small rivers 

Cascading into the mighty Indus

[…]

Rigzin Namgyal

Watershed

”A flood of thoughts
has washed me
ashore.

Out of earshot.

Beneath a new
sky.

And now I plant

in an untouched
field.”

MAGNÚS SIGURÐSSON
TRANSLATED FROM THE ICELANDIC BY MEG MATICH

© 2011-2012, Death Valley, California.

“There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,   

Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill

Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.   

Around were heaps of ruins piled between   

The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care;   

And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls

One pillar rose up dark against the moon.   

There was a nameless Presence everywhere;   

In the gray soil there was a purple stain,   

And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood—

Blood of a vast unknown Calamity.            

It was the mark of some ancestral grief—

Grief that began before the ancient Flood.”

EDWIN MARKHAM

title inspired by the book “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki.

An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway.” 

JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI - In Praise of Shadows

© 2019, Scotland.

“Here lies our land: every airt

Beneath swift clouds, glad glints of sun,

Belonging to none but itself.

We are mere transients, who sing

Its westlin' winds and fernie braes,

Northern lights and siller tides,

Small folk playing our part.

'Come all ye', the country says

You win me, who take me most to heart.”

Kathleen Jamie

© 2016-2018 Swiss and French Alps

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;

I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.

As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,

I have a world apart that is not among men.

Li Bai