A FLOWER FOR HUI-NENG

From the first not a thing is.
Not a tree is planted.
Not a mirror is made
to shine in moonsplashed night.
And from no-thing
you answered Shen-hsiu.

You had thoughts
yet had them not.
From nothing
beyond the bodhi-tree
to nothing.

So, great patriarch,
I snap a blossom from the bough.

Poem taken from Congress 3 edited by Sam Seiffer and d.a.levy, 1967