A Bird Returns Home (T'ao Yuan-ming - parts 1 and 2)

These are the first two parts of a four part poem I translated this morning by T'ao Yuan-ming.  For those of you unfamiliar with his work, T'ao is a precursor of the Tang poets, dating to the Six Dynasties period, with official dates given as 365-427 AD.  Known as the Hermit Poet, this series of poems is generally understood to be autobiographical inasmuch as T'ao was the first of the great Chinese poets who kicked over the traces of a career in the Imperial bureaucracy in favor of a return to his rural farmstead, with the bird returning home meant to be a stand-in for the poet himself.

Part One

Folding its wings

A bird returns home  

After flying off at dawn

Into the woods

Far away it pursued

Eight different routes

Resting near a cloudy peak

Until the breeze made

It uneasy and it flapped

Its wings again

Elsewhere seeking

Its heart’s content

Attending to the cry

Of other birds nearby

It then withdrew

To the shelter

Of a shady spot

 其一

翼翼归鸟

晨去于林

远之八表

近憩云岑

和风不洽

翻翮求心

顾俦相鸣

景庇清阴

Part Two

Folding its wings

A bird returns home

How high it had soared

How far it had flown

Although not naturally

Inclined to wandering

Seeing the forest

It felt fettered

Encountering clouds

It climbed and descended

Until the cry of other birds

Made it return home

Abandoning the road

In preference for leisure and

The pursuit of more

Instinctive pleasures 

Without interruption  

 其二

翼翼归鸟

载翔载飞

虽不怀游

见林情依

遇云颉颃

相鸣而归

遐路诚悠

性爱无遗

A Question of Non-Agency Pondered as I Walked

When guilt is the spring

Then mystery is the clock

That keeps ticking within 

Forever tightly wound
Marking all the unknowns
And all the deficiencies

Of our daily lot

But once cause and effect
Are let slip through Indra's net

Then Self itself may go missing
And the clock may stop ticking

As No-self succeeds in untying
Identity's Gordian Knot

Passing the Incense Temple (by Wang Wei)

Passing the Incense Temple    

On a journey of unknowing

Deep into the cloudy peaks

Alone among ancient trees

A distant bell resounds

Down a steep rocky path

The mountain stream tumbles

Through a dim pine glade

In the fading light of day

Before rounding a bend

It settles in a pool of quiet

Where the peace-filled mind   

At last stills the lashing dragon

过香积寺

王维

不知香积寺    数里入云峰
古木无人径    深山何处钟
泉声咽危石    日色冷青松
薄暮空潭曲    安禅制毒龙

*  *  *  *  *

Meditation and poetry have long gone hand in hand.  Each alone presents challenges. Practiced together they open a path for experiencing the world with a heightened appreciation for how the spiritual and aesthetic realms are profoundly intertwined.  Wang Wei and Bai Juyi are perhaps the two most celebrated masters of meditative poetry from the Tang period and they have both been a huge influence in my life, as you can see in some of my recent poems, here and here. 

Meditation and Thunder

Settling on the mat 

Last night as the sky darkened

From an approaching storm

My thoughts wandered

To Buddha’s parable

About the house on fire

When suddenly as if

By sympathetic fallacy

An alarm resounded

In the firehouse nearby and

There was thunder and lightning

Close enough to be frightening

Which gave me pause to wonder

If suddenly Buddha’s metaphor

May have been rendered

Real after all

And then the heavens

Opened and poured forth

In an answering cascade of rain

From roof to eaves and

From leaves to ground

Enough to extinguish

Any fire in the house

Whether real or imagined

A better vehicle to understanding

Than any cart I might fancy

Soaking rain being a gift

And truth sufficient in itself

To settle the dragon

Of the mind

A thunder god

Poem in the Form of a Short Public Announcement Inscribed on the Side of a Cardboard Box

One of a writer's most self-ennobling conceits is that the right words in the right order possess transformative power, capable of turning the mundane into the sublime (and vice versa I suppose) simply through the storyteller's charm and/or the poet's enlivening touch.  Thus it is that novelists take pride in framing their stories from mere drollery and poets compose their most heartfelt odes in the form of a shopping list.  It is very much in that spirit that I offer up the following poem in the form of a short public announcement meant to be inscribed on the side of a plain cardboard box ...

I come to you tonight

Perched on no platform

Other than myself

(although please 

keep in mind some

further disassembly

may still be required)

Now please sit quietly

And contemplate what bearing

This might possibly have

On you and yourself

*  *  *  *  * 

I think it only fair to dedicate this poem to the editors of Shambala Press who several years ago declined to publish my Monkey King translation ostensibly on the grounds that I lacked a suitable platform - a word and concept now very much in vogue.  It's really only thanks to that stinging rejection that I have subsequently had occasion to learn so much about platforms for poetry and sutras, such as they are, which has better prepared me for the upcoming publication of the Monkey King book.  Much as it may hurt, sometimes rejection proves to be the best remedy for what really ails and afflicts us.   

A Brief Sociological Digression - Lamport's First Axiom of Email Addiction

I’ve noticed something odd lately about my addiction to email.  It seems that the frequency with which I check my inbox is inversely correlated to the amount of email I am receiving at any given time.  Thus, the less email I receive the more inclined I am to check my inbox and vice versa.  If so, then this suggests that email addiction (more generally) is a form of isolation anxiety – it is the lack of signal that heightens our concern about our social standing; and conversely it is the overabundance of signal that compels us to tune out.  

Wouldn't it really be ironic now if I end up being better-known for this email theorem than for one of my poems.     See, e.g., the Ode to Truth.

A Short Ode to Poetry

If a poem is like a wheelbarrow

That must overcome a mountain

Of indifference (first of the poet’s

very own making and then

of the rest of the world’s)

Then who among us is fit to say

When a metaphor is said and done

That indifference may not

Be completely warranted
Since a mountain may be moved
Or transplanted given repeated transit
Of that very same wheelbarrow
Filled with stones and dirt  

Today I felt the urge to write this brief ode to poetry.  I guess you could say it's a poem written in the form of a metaphor.  I'd like to dedicate it to my dad (and Grandpa Pete and Samuel Beckett to name but a few of my fathers, consanguineous or otherwise) on Father's Day 2016, in the spirit that has brought us to where we presently stand, wheelbarrow in hand.  Those of you who are interested in such things may want to read this earlier poem where I first tried to explain my love for the wheelbarrow -- as something more than just a handy metaphor - it's quite literally a most useful device.  And it keeps picking up new meaning - like so many stones in the bed of the barrow -- as I trundle on my way.