Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems Quotes

“Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“Damn me not I make a better fool. And there is nothing vaster, more beautiful, remote, unthinking (eternal rose-red sunrise on the surf—great rectitude of rocks) than man, inhuman man,

At whom I look for a thousand light years from a seat near Scorpio, amazed and touched by his concern and pity for my plight, a simple star,

Then trading shapes again. My wife is gone, my girl is gone, my books are loaned, my clothes are worn, I gave away a car; and all that happened years ago. Mind & matter, love & space are frail as foam on beer.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“Clouds sink down the hills
Coffee is hot again. The dog
Turns and turns about, stops and sleeps.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at -
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
And I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“I’m sixty-eight” he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that’s just what
I’ve gone and done.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“I wanted a good place to settle:
Cold Mountain would be safe.
Light wind in a hidden pine -
Listen close - the sound gets better.
Under it a gray haired man
Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.
For ten years I havn't gone back home
I've even forgotten the way by which I came.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods
It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train.
It must have been a thousand years ago
In some old mountain sawmill of Japan.
A horde of excess poets and unwed girls
And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear
Tracking the human future
Of intelligence and despair.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“I have lived at Cold Mountain
These thirty long years.
Yesterday I called on friends and family:
More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.
Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;
Forever flowing, like a passing river.
Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:
Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“In the mountains it's cold.
Always been cold, not just this year.
Jagged scarps forever snowed in
Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.
Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,
Leaves begin to fall in early August.
And here I am, high on mountains,
Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“What use, Milton, a silly story
Of our lost general parents,
eaters of fruit?”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“White clouds gather and billow. Thin grass does for a mattress, The blue sky makes a good quilt. Happy with a stone underhead Let heaven and earth go about their changes.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“In the glittering light I got drunk and reeled through
the rooms,
And cried, “Cartagena! swamp of unholy loves!”
And wept for the Indian whores who were younger than me,
and I was eighteen,
And splashed after the crew down the streets wearing
sandals bought at a stall
And got back to the ship, dawn came,
we were far out at sea.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

“Spring-water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge—the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.”
― Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems