Friday, May 11, 2012

May 11. Sunrise

May 11.

Dews come with the grass.  There is, I find on examining, a small, clear drop at the end of each blade, quite at the top on one side. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1852

See May 13, 1860: ("Each dewdrop is a delicate crystalline sphere trembling at the tip of a fresh green grass-blade. Each dewdrop takes the form of the planet itself. The surface of the globe is thus tremblingly alive."); January 6, 1858 ("What a world we live in! . . .There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill.")


Dogen ("The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.")


                                and Issa:


This dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world
And yet, and yet 



This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
Translated by Lewis Mackenzie

From: The Autumn Wind

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