Brief Description

"Thich Nhat Hanh is a real poet."--Robert Lowell

In this collection of more than 100 poems composed over the last forty years, Thich Nhat Hanh's clarity shines forth, transforming the pain and difficulty of war and exile into a celebration of awareness and the human spirit. This beautiful book includes commentaries by Thich Nhat Hanh and fifty drawings and photos.

"Thich Nhat Hanh's poems have an almost uncanny power to disarm delusion, awaken compassion, and carry the mind into the immediate presence of meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha."--Sogyal Rinpoche

"The clear, still mind of this meditation teacher gives rise to piercing images time and time again. Nhat Hanh seems an inherently skilled poet....It is these poetic works--more than his essays or lectures--that show Thich Nhat Hanh clearly to be a Zen mystic."--San Francisco Chronicle

"When we despair for our world, this book is a wise friend to turn to."--Essential Living

Sample Chapter

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow--even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hinds. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.