The following is a poetry offering from Treetop’s Shuso (head student), Peter Joryu Harris. Peter, who is an English professor at Colby College will be offering a workshop on Zen Wisdom in Poetry at Treetop Zen Center on Saturday, March 14 at 10 a.m.

Today’s poem is Is My Soul Asleep, by Antonio Machado (1875-1939), one of Spain’s greatest poets. His poetry often reflects an awareness of an animate universe where all things interpenetrate one another.

Is My Soul Asleep?

Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped. And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open,
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

Translated by Robert Bly