Daily Zen

Massed peaks pierce
The cold-colored sky;
A view the
Monastery faces.
Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way
Clouds the other
Few people come
To this mountaintop
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.
One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world's affairs

- Chia Tao