Meng Tzu’s Song
The sparrows gleaning gutters
Kick and shuffle the horsehair,
And the simple wind that stirs
Their feathers stirs my hair.
How can I know, now forty
Years have shuffled my shoulders
Whether my mind is steady
Or quakes as the wind stirs?
Because one sparrow, running
On the old wind-ruts can be
Turned by an unseen thing,
A small wind in the sky,
And changes, it sets me thinking;
Yet I know not if my mind
Is moved, or is but sinking
Alone to its own kind.
If my mind moves not in wind
Or other breaths, it is not
Strange; at forty the mind
Of Kao Tzu wavered not.
Lo, how is the kept wind let
Out to make trouble with me!
How can one remain not
Moving before his eye?