Rumi & Shinkichi Takahashi: Two Poems for a Friday Afternoon

Photo by Trabajo Propio

I have lived on the lip 
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!

     Rumi  (quatrain #1249)
     translated by Coleman Barks  

Photo by Mathias Karlsson

 

Potato

Inside of one potato
there are mountains and rivers.

   Shinkichi Takahashi
   translated by Harold P. Wright 

Sometimes, on the surface, it would seem that two poems share little in common. But that's on the surface. What might be their relationship? Is it purely the mind that dovetails their separate meanings, or is it something else?

Certainly, they are both mystical.

These two poems, by two poetic masters, somehow ended up on my radar within the same week. They seem, in a mere 4 and 2 lines respectively, to contain universes. 

Let's leave it at that, eh?

This journey is certainly scenic.

~~~~~~~

 

The Moon and the Milky Way by Yoshitoshi

 

looking pretty
in a hole in the paper door...
Milky Way

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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