A little light poetry

We've all been there, haven't we? Deciding to write poetry whilst drunk at some point in our angst-ridden teens? No? Oh, just me then. Anyway, here's a little something from the eighteenth-century Japanese Zen poet Ryokan that is reminiscent of such incidents, with less of the angst:

Stone steps, a mound of lustrous green moss;
The wind carries the scent of cedar and pine.
The rain has stopped and it is beginning to clear.
I call to the children as I walk to get some village sake.
After drinking too much, I happily write these verses.

As translated by John Stevens in One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (2006, Weatherhill).

Just one of my new books that arrived last week. How ironic that I have to buy books to remind me that I'm trying to live a simple, low-cost, less consumerist kind of life. Oh well, cheers!