司空圖二十四詩品《自然》 / Sikong Tu's Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry, 10 - "The Self-Determined"

The tenth poem of Sikong Tu's Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry is titled 自然, which often gets translated as "nature." While that's a generally useful translation, there's more to it than that. 自 is a reflexive, and 然 can mean "thusly" or "in this way," or, as Kroll puts it in his dictionary, "to be like something is expected to be," so you can read 自然 as "that which is what it is in and of itself." Since that's a decidedly inelegant phrase, I've gone with "self-determined."

This poem reads as very Daoist, or very Chan Buddhist, though there aren't any overt symbols of either tradition present (unless you count the hermit, but given the ubiquity of hermits in Chinese poetry, this one could be a Daoist or a Buddhist). While this ambiguity—or maybe syncretism is a more useful way of thinking about it—isn't particular to Sikong Tu, I've found that it runs through a lot of these poems, reflecting the poet's engagement with both schools, which in turn reflects the depth of Daoism and Chan Buddhism's influence on Chinese poetics and aesthetics. David Hinton talks about this at length in his book Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Chinese Poetry. Hinton deals specifically with 杜甫 Du Fu's work, but you can extrapolate a lot of his ideas to other poets.

著手成春 is a neat phrase that I translated pretty much literally, but since it's still a little obtuse, it's meant to imply that once you get going, everything will be all right. I don't necessarily share that optimism (though in the context of this poem, I certainly do), but I can't argue with the necessity of actually getting around to doing something. 

See y'all soon. Enjoy the poem!

微臣

史大偉

-----

自然

俯拾即是

不取諸鄰

俱道適往

著手成春

如逢花開

如瞻歲新
真與不奪

強得易貧

幽人空山

過雨采萍

薄言情悟

悠悠天鈞

-----

"The Self-Determined"

Sikong Tu

Look down and pick up what's there

don't go looking all around for it

all paths lead to it

set out, and it's spring before you know it

Like coming across flowers in bloom

or seeing the arrival of the new year

it can't be compelled

if taken by force, it is worthless

The hermit in the empty hills

collecting duckweed in the rain

fewer words, genuine realization

Heaven shapes things in its own time