In the Deep Woods
October 16, 2009
You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.
- 寒山 Han Shan
Advertisement
This poem is deep. Please explain. I have a faint idea of what it’s about. But I’d prefer to hear your interpretation.
I took a few things out of this. Mostly it reminded me of the hadith in which the Prophet (S) cried out: “Oh God, show us things as they truly are!”
I also took that we should appreciate our blessings, and look at the brighter side of things… not letting the negative things we see in the world bring us down. Even though we are all like flowers slowly perishing amongst leaves, it’s not productive to let that fact bring us down.
A flower’s beauty is that it stays majestically blooming until it withers away, never letting the rest of the world affect it, but rather displaying its beauty in any circumstance until the very end. What is more fragile than a flower? One gust of wind can blow it away. Yet despite this, despite its assured inevitable demise, it struggles against the odds anyway in order to bloom and display its divine beauty, and it does not waste its opportunity.
Imam ‘Ali (a.s.) said: “Be like the flower that gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it.”