Dream of the Apocalypse

The Apocalypse was not nearly as bad as everyone had expected and feared. The day after it happened, the President gave a reassuring speech from the Oval Office talking about American resilience and strength. Only a few days later, the NYSE reopened for trading – even the futures market – and while the insurance sector took a heavy beating, tech stocks rallied and other blue chips stabilized too. Soon enough restaurants began to reopen for take-out and most airlines resumed flights on their major routes. 

We went about business-as-usual wondering how to project revenues for next year. Reilly over in finance said at our Monday meeting the end of the world was no big deal, at most maybe a 10% decline in new orders. But I thought to myself, we really shouldn’t normalize this. How the hell can this be normalized? When the Queen Bee dies, the hive quickly falls into disrepair. So how can the worker bees continue to keep up with our routine? 

Time began to move backward. During Thursday’s planning meeting I sat and watched a stink bug crawl slowly back and forth across the top of my computer monitor. I got reissued a Blackberry which I hadn’t used in more than a dozen years. 

That night I flew to England with Dr. Portofino on the red eye where I was surprised to discover it was six hours earlier not later than New York. Portofino and I had dinner with two clients and after dinner we went for a walk around what used to be Trafalgar Square. It was only half an hour before curfew and the streets of London were filled with rubble, bricks and shards of glass, post-modern ruin lay everywhere. But a large passageway had been cleared through the rubble, and the Square felt lively, with hundreds of strollers out to enjoy the warm spring air. 

Civilization has a long fat tail, Portofino said, as he exhaled a thin trail of smoke from his panatela. 

One of the clients tapped me on the shoulder and said Look isn’t that Tom Petty and sure enough it was, which seemed strange because he’d been dead for more than half a dozen years.

We Have Met the Aliens ... And They May Be Us

This morning on my dog walk I listened to a not-so-recent episode of the Ezra Klein show in which two scientists heatedly debated the risks and rewards of human attempts to make contact with alien civilizations.  (You can listen for yourself here.) The nominal news hook for this show was last year's release of a Pentagon report that begrudgingly conceded the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation as evidenced by inexplicable supersonic beeps and blips showing up on Raytheon's most advanced detection systems. It's both interesting and comical to hear these two men of science go at each other, somewhat like watching Jane Curtain and Dan Akroyd on a rerun of Saturday Night Live, only with all of human civilization hanging in the balance; even when the experts talk, they can't help but project our best and worst fears onto the very notion of aliens. 

But listening to the debate, it occurred to me that there is an altogether different explanation for these military sightings of UFOs traveling at warp speed through our airspace.  What if the aliens showing up on the radar are simply human-made aircraft from the future?  If human civilization lasts long enough to undertake interstellar travel, then surely time travel might also be on the agenda.  And as anyone who grew up reading science fiction well knows, one of the first rules of time travel is not to interfere with events as they unfold in the past, for fear of upsetting the chain of causality that supports the eternal present.  This then would explain why the Pentagon finds it so difficult to make contact with these so-called aliens.  We have met the aliens ... and they are us.  Somehow we must find a way to convince our future selves that we mean them no harm and they can approach us at no risk to us or themselves.  Given the rapacious way in which we are despoiling the planet, this may not be an easy case to make.  But so much hangs in the balance if we ever hope to arrange a rendezvous with our future selves, more mindfulness in the present is surely the best possible route.

In other words, projection may be warranted, though somewhat misunderstood, as an altogether appropriate response to such alien sightings.

@ezraklein, in case you happen to stumble across this blogpost, I have a modest request: would you please ask the NYTimes advertising department to find a sponsor for your show other than Facebook?  Much as I have enjoyed listening to your podcast, you can't help but put your credibility at risk to the extent that Mark and Sheryl continue to subsidize your musings.

 

In the Springtime of Decay

In the springtime of decay

When petals still hold firm

And the citadel of green

Has yet to fall

Nature makes

This teasing promise

In the warm soft light

Of the October day

And I hear the flowers say

All this now shall be

Ours forevermore 

And when death comes

It will start easy like

A long term layaway plan

The Algorithms of Fate

 for Robert Bly

Eat your shadow as the poet says

And that's exactly what I did

But now my shadow's eating me

Night after night nibbling my ear

Whispering the strangest of dreams

Hand coloring local maps or so it seems

Until there's a blood red tide that laps

The shoreline of Weesuck Creek

And all night long I hear the strains

Of music playing softly beneath

The balcony - a serenade

Strummed on a six string guitar

By the cold hand of fear

The lyrics I remember 

But can no way explain

The path inward and outward

Is one and the same as we

Pass through the portal

Of ceaseless change 

Back and forth in accord

With our fate whose algorithm

We grasp when it’s only too late

Of the Subtle Body

Only dimly perceived

The subtle body resides

Deep within each heave 

Of the shuddering chest

No mere replica in miniature

Being made of something

Other than flesh

A body electric

Lacking fixture or frame

Nothing but a hollow cavity

Through which energy flows

To the subtlest mind it remains

Untouchable as it oscillates

Through peaks and valleys

Animating all the rest

Beyond All Poetry

I woke up this morning standing

In my neighbor's front yard

How I got there

I have no idea

But I was looking at my life

As my neighbor sees it

Stripped of the usual self-regard

And beyond all poetry

There was a barren ledge

Overlooking a vast plain

Already familiar to me

Having spent a long time there

Sitting attuned

To the rhythms

In the cycle of breath and

Listening to the long slow rattle

From the bottom of my chest

As if I was heaving up a bucket

From a deep dark well

But there are no metaphors

To explain where

I'm going next

The road sign ahead only 

Says sssshhhhhh!

An old man is sleeping 

Beyond poetry 

Is where I always intended to go

And finally I'm here

The Translation Game

One way to understand translation is that it's the opposite of writing or its mirror image. When you write, you start with a truth that’s inside you, and you use language to try and expose it to the outside world. When you translate, you start with an outside truth that’s given to you, and you must internalize it through the medium of language. Translation in that way is just a deeper form of reading, an attempt to go beyond a shallow understanding of what someone else has said by memorializing it in words that ring true to your own ear.

Red Pine, who is one of my favorite translators of Chinese poetry, has said that there are as many translations of a Chinese poem as there are translators. That's really a definitional observation and leads us to the understanding that there is no such thing as a definitive translation.  To take this thought a bit further, translation is certainly not a science, nor do I think of it as an art so much as it is a fundamental part of the human condition. We are forever translating, whether we realize it or not, the web of language that surrounds us into our personal idiom.

We pursue truth the way a hunter chases after game, except that truth is far more elusive than even the fleetest doe or buck.  No matter how many arrows we shoot, they always fall short of the mark, until we learn to shoot in the dark and with no arrows at all take aim.  Writing and translating happen through the medium of language but the truths we pursue reside in wordless silence and ultimately that’s where they always remain.

My new book of translations of Chinese poetry

called The Poetry of Awakening is now available

in paperback.  You can find it on Amazon (if you

don't mind abetting monopoly power) or on Barnes & Noble.

*  *  *  *  *

"There's something wrong here. Translating Chinese poetry isn't supposed to be this much fun" 

     --  Red Pine

When I finished the manuscript for this book, I sent a copy to Red Pine and he was kind enough to provide me with this blurb quote.  My editor, Marc Estrin, decided not use it on the book jacket because he thought it didn't recommend or illuminate the book to potential readers.  This is one case in which I find myself disagreeing with Marc.  Red Pine's blurb reads to me as high praise, at least when I translate it into my personal idiom.  Translating these poems was close to pure delight for me, and I hope at least part of that joy comes through for readers.    

I Hear the Spinning Earth (for @duanetoops)

Waking from a dream last night

I heard the earth's gears turning

And ringing in my ears or maybe

It was a high pitched sonic wind

Blowing steady through the trees

Pfizer and Merck might try

To medicalize this condition

But to hear the earth 

Spinning no fearful thing

It's a dizziness to be savored

Like a theremin on a planetary 

Scale the world hums as it spins

The Poetry of Awakening

Every day the same routine, as Layman Pang put it, only with myself in harmony, not right or wrong but abiding.  Today's routine is only different for me because it's the publication date for my new book, The Poetry of Awakening, an anthology of Tang spiritual poetry, The collection includes translations of 78 poems by more than a dozen Daoist and Buddhist poets, illuminating this unique tradition in which poetry merges with spiritual practice.  Layman Pang's poem about his daily routine served as the inspiration for me over the last half dozen years, as I plugged away reading and translating these wonderful poems.

I'm deeply grateful to Marc Estrin and Donna Bister of Fomite Press for their patience, encouragement and invaluable help, without which I would most likely never have seen this project through to completion, and most certainly never would have been able to produce such a handsome book.  This is the first time I have had the chance to work with a publisher in producing one of my books, and despite all my  misgivings about losing control over the process, there's no doubt it pays to have the very best professional help.  

Some but not all of these translations have already been published here on my blog.  But in case you're interested in having a copy to carry along on your next mountain trek or meditation retreat, you can buy it now on Amazon (if you don't mind abetting monopoly power), or pre-order it from Barnes & Noble.  

Here's an excerpt from the preface that explains a bit about what I find so compelling about this poetic tradition:

The poems I've chosen to translate and bring together in this collection were written in China during the first millennium of the Common Era.  They include poems by a diverse group of writers, many of them Buddhists of one stripe or another, others Daoists or fellow travelers of the Buddhist faith.  But even among those who identified as practicing Buddhists, it may be misleading to suppose much commonality of faith: Buddhist spiritual beliefs and practices in China evolved considerably over the course of the centuries in which these poems were written.  Some of the poets collected here were renowned and avowedly secular, while others lived as reclusive hermits, and still others took up orders and lived as members of a monastic community.

Diverse as this grouping of poets may be, and divergent as their life experiences and doctrinal beliefs were, the poems here represent a singular and quite remarkable poetic tradition, which I refer to as the poetry of awakening. The common aspiration was to express through poetry the nature of spiritual awakening, as they experienced it in their own lives.  These are personal poems, deeply felt, which makes them accessible, even thought they speak to us from a distant time and strange culture, and address the loftiest and most abstruse of themes.

At bottom, this tradition rests on an unresolvable paradox.  The assumption (often explicitly stated) of these poets is that the experience of spiritual awakening is incapable of being expressed in words, no matter how artfully a poem may be crafted.  The insights possessed by the awakened mind and heart simply fall beyond the capacity of language.  Why write such poetry at all, then?  Part of the wonder of this tradition is the continued striving to give voice to the inexpressible. The tension wrapped up in this paradox confers to the poems' spiritual depth and power.

Something else I find distinctive about this mode of living and writing is the fusion of poetry and spirituality into part of an integrated practice.  At their best, these poems are not simply exercises of poetic imagination, nor are they merely descriptive of the poet's spiritual life.  They seem directly integrated into the process of spiritual exploration and experience.  Poetry becomes the practice.   

 

September Wind

 With a named storm

500 miles offshore today

The whole lawn is trembling

Quivering with pleasure really

In response to the stiff breeze

Its the affinity between

All living things

The same wind that

Lifts the dandelion spores

And choeographs the dance

Of the trees

Beguiles the whole world

Into a new form

Poem for a Cloud Passing Overhead Near the End of Summer

Falling deeper into reverie

I get a glimpse of it yet

A summer breeze stirs

Across the lawn

Recursively

Just as vision returns and

A cloud whispers overhead

Poems within poems 

In the things

A great poet never said

Human nature is the container

Our experience flows

Into continuously 

All the signals received

That were never sent

The ghost in the machine

That keeps us busy guessing at

Whatever might have been meant

After the First Death

What makes you so sure

That after the first death

There can be no other

After the first one

Deaths merely become

Numberless

Each day brings

Its own variety and

Occasionally they come

Under a borrowed name

(such as awakening

or something equally 

difficult to explain)

Which means that over

The vast span of eternity

No two of your deaths

Will ever be the same

I Slowed for Death

I slowed for Death

But he did not stop for me 

Today on the Expressway

 

More than halfway to my destination 

I came upon the hulk of a car 

On the shoulder in flames   

Its paint blistering  

A black cloud billowing 

As it dispersed overhead

In the snarl of traffic

A sleek black sedan  

Had eased in behind me  

Its headlights flashing

Signaling me to uncertain end 

Death it seemed expected me

To pull over next

Soon as the roadway cleared

I sped away 

Pushing 75 then 80

Hoping to put some room

Between me and that black sedan   

Yet all the while it 

Stayed on my tail

Headlights flashing

And I felt my chest tighten

As I eyed the rearview

I slowed to 60 then 55

Unsure what to do next  

Until suddenly the sedan 

Veered into the passing lane

And the driver threw me

A sidelong glance

Graciously doffing his cap

Before speeding ahead 

Letting me know that surely  

We shall meet again some day

Towards my journey's end 

What's Vladimir Doing Here

What's Vladimir doing here

I asked myself Wednesday

Exactly that question passing

Through Fremont Square

Vladimir and his pointy cap

So jaunty and free

What's up with that

Can you answer me

Everyone has an origin story

So unique we seem to be

But ultimately we're just the same

Despite all our idiosyncrasies

At least that's what 

Vladimir says to me

  

For the Love of LIfe in All its Forms

I stand at the kitchen sink

The dirty dishes piled high

And marvel at my son's banter

With his daughter

Over the changing table

How the tables have turned

Who is the baby now

And who the old man

One generation leads us forward

While the shadow of another

Falls behind

Poem Composed in a Bed of Clover

This spring things are growing

Around me lushly like a thick bed

Of clover so much so that it feels

Like I’m a baby swaddled in a blanket

Held tightly but without the luxury 

Of being able to roll over and yet

The clover keeps growing 

All around my face

On the Ferry

Once again a fair weather crossing

Sitting masked in the bow

Forward looking in spirit

On a first post-pandemic journey

Along the outer banks of good reason

Sunning on the upper deck

With a fair mermaid in the prow

But what lies ahead soon falls behind

Coming or going rarely different in kind

Howsoever different in mind

Spring Candelabra (a love poem to my favorite tree)

On our morning walk

Marissa and I came across

This magnolia tree possessed by

The first light from the East

A spring candelabra

Of outlandish beauty

With its shadow dancing 

On the lawn in front of us

Bobbing in a light breeze

And I stood befuddled

And transfixed having

Stumbled upon it at the

Very moment its blossoms 

Began opening this year

In staggered bursts 

Of green-yellow flame

A shot for the Year Book 

It was truly an epiphany

In the droll personal history

Of me and my favorite tree  

   

 

A Light Rain in Early Spring (by Han Yu)

 

From Heaven's byways

A light rain falls

Fine as silk

The grass looks

Bedraggled

On the verge

But not yet here

Peerless is springtime

Surrounded by blessings

The willow triumphs

Shrouded in mist

An Emperor enthroned

In the Forbidden City

A Single Spring (by Han Shan)

Today I translated this poem by Han Shan, the hermit-poet of Cold Mountain.  It's the last line of this poem that takes my breath away.  How many years lie within a single spring?  This for me captures the essence of early spring - a time filled by infinite possibility -- when all of life is crammed into a handful of days as the worms first begin turning the soil.

My home is spare

And well hidden

Dwelling far from

The earth's clamor

I tread on the grass

To make three paths

And gaze upon the clouds

Who are my nearest neighbors

The birds join me in song

There's no else to discuss

Any matters of Dharma

Each day bears the fruit

Of Karma's great tree

How many years I wonder 

Lie within a single spring 

    

The Dream Machine

It comes without instructions

Nor are any needed really

The design is intuitive

You just plug it in 

And close your eyes

Tightly or ever so slightly

It matters not a bit

The pillow rises and falls

As if breathing on its own

Part of a larger apparatus 

Which delivers dreams

Directly to your head

All of which are recorded

On a flash memory card

Retrievable periodically

Subject to overwriting and error

In accordance with an algorithm

First inscribed in the Book of the Dead

 

 

Spring Scene (by Du Fu)

This Du Fu poem (written in the mid 8th century) captures the mood of the moment for me -- the return of spring in a world that has not yet emerged from a period of disruption and ruin.  Why write poetry at a time of seeming social collapse?  Is it a sympathetic fallacy to suppose that a millennium or so hence someone may understand that much better how they are feeling?  

Spring Scene

The country lies broken though

Mountains and rivers remain

As spring returns to the city

Grasses and trees regain

The depth of green

But in the mood 

Of these days

Dew sprinkles the flowers

Like tears on the cheek

And the heart knows only regret

Watching the sparrow take flight

For three months 

The beacon fires have flared

Making a letter from home

More precious than gold

And my white hair grown

Thin from constant scratching

Won't even hold a pin

 

Ode to My Tinnitus

Oh tinnitus

Boon companion

Through all these years

Harbinger of headache

Sentinel of joy

How you dissipate

When I meditate

How you follow me

Walking along the shore

One of life's constants

Yet only a figment of

My perceptual apparatus

No less barometer of my soul

Coeval and coequally formed

An auditory shadow

That can never be ignored

Persistent and cloying

No one celebrates your arrival

Or will mourn when you're gone

Much as self-awareness itself

The atman and anatman

Together entwined 

Being an effect undeniable  

Still without discernible cause  

So pleased at last to encounter

Your mercurial nature

In slightly more fixed form

Marcelo Zissu's Brain

Singing Alone in the Mountains (by Bai Juyi)

Everyone has their habits

Mine is composing verse

Everything else has faded away

But this weakness alone 

Has stayed with me

Whenever I come across

A beautiful scene

I want to do right

As I would with friend or kin

To sing aloud or make note

About this encounter

With divine mystery

Whether I'm floating down river

Or resting half way up the mountain

When a new poem

Presents itself

Or alone on the path

Hiking up the eastern cliff

Resting my body

Against the white rock

That overlooks the precipice

And clinging to the branches

Of a laurel tree

My wild song

Shatters the peace

Of the ravine below

The birds and apes

All cry in response

Whether they're

Scared or laughing

I can't be sure

And the suddenly

The world seems

Uninhabited

As if I'm the last man

On the face of the earth

 

Four Poems by Rose Ausländer

 Plum Blossoms

Why do my people love the plum blossom?

My people are plum blossoms themselves

When winter storms with snow and ice

It brings forth the pink and white blossoms

When winter rages and road is forsaken

Undaunted, the blossoms forge ahead

Their tender leaves drunk with courage

Dance quietly to the wind that howls

It's more than luck, amidst the storm,

To show pluck against such mighty power

Seven told tales of the common folk

Sing praise of the plum blossom's quiet power

And wisely teach all seven tales

With iron fight but love gently

Or by the wisdom of the Chinese sages

From strength comes tenderness and

And from tenderness strength

When terror descends upon the earth

Such that all other blossoms hide in fright

Then you bloom in your still and quiet light

Bringing confidence to the world anew

Mother Tongue

I have myself

Transformed into myself

From moment to moment

Into pieces splintered

Along the way of words

Mother tongue

Put me back together

A human mosaic

*******

Love (vi)

We will find ourselves

again in the lake

you as water

me as a lotus blossom

You will carry me

I will drink of you

We will belong to each other

for all to see

Even the stars

will be filled with wonder

how two here have been

transformed back

into a dream

of their choosing

*******

The Heart Unheard

I hear the heart unheard

In my breath

A clock made of air

The melody in the music box

Alive inside the temple

With muted tones

Like spinning spheres

Standing Alone (by Du Fu)

High above a hawk soars

On the river a pair of white gulls

Windswept, squabble over their prey

So easy it seems to roam far away

The grass heavy laden with dew

Beaded still on the spider webs too

Heaven's mysteries feel close at hand

Amidst ten thousand worries

Alone I stand

Midwinter Dreaming

Last night

In the depths of winter

I dreamt of a blue butterfly Landing on the page of the book I was reading and I wondered Is this a message from The future or the past

For it was just as

I had once sat with

My brother who read to me

Holding a book in his lap

Before I could read for myself

And the butterfly flitted

About on the page

Never quite settling down

But if only I could learn

To read deep at last

Perhaps like a butterfly myself

One day I could become incarnate

Within the text and yet

Still somehow flutter

Around the page

****************

This poem is based on a dream I had a few night ago. I might not have written it down if not for inspiration provided by David Starzynski (@sfourstarz) who wrote this tweet that I came across in my feed earlier today:

If a butterfly appeared

in the dead of winter here,

it would be so special.

Just sayin'

Funny, because that is exactly how the dream had made me feel. So this poem is my response to David's tweet, with a tip of the hat to Zhuang Zhou of course who holds an eternal copyright on this theme.

Gazelles Upon the Hillside

I heard the falling hooves

Of gazelles upon the hillside

Yet the temple bell

Remained still and quiet

How the spirit starts to tremble

When it can reach no higher

Then silence becomes a cave

Into which such loneliness retires