Ode to a Vestigial Context

From dust to dust
And from bit to bit
You know one day
Not so long ago
They used to give you
A paper receipt
At the grocery store
But now we are so
Much further adrift and
Manifest only virtually
As every day a little less
Gets affixed to the page

*  *  *  *  *  *

This poem is noteworthy in the means of its composition inasmuch as it represents one of the few times I have completely dispensed with the initial step of writing the words down in one of my little black notebooks (which for the last four or five years I have been in the habit of carrying everywhere around) and instead I wrote it on a handheld device as I was standing in line at the supermarket and posted it directly here to the blog.

The Newly Planted Pines (by Qi Ji)

This is a poem by the poet-monk Qi Ji who wrote in the late Tang period, as the dynasty was settling into terminal decline.  This is the first of his poems that I've translated so I don't yet have any idea of the range of his work.  But I like the simplicity and understatement of this poem and his thoughtful way of describing cultivation in terms of both the inner and outer landscape.

The Newly Planted Pines

By a field near where

The monks have taught

Things grow in accordance

With Buddha’s law

Luxuriantly sprouting forth

When disheveled then weeded

In a hundred years

A man grows old but 

It will take a millennium

For these pines to

Attain their full stature

Peaceful and proper

In a thick stand they grow

Among bamboo and rocks

The wild apes hiding

In the forest nearby

A day will come when they will

Cast thick shade behind

And when the autumn wind blows

They will sway like an ocean wave

新栽松

野僧教种法

苒苒出蓬蒿

百岁催人老

千年待尔高

静宜兼竹石

幽合近猿猱

他日成阴后

秋风吹海涛

The Jewel Inside the Lotus

Buddhism is, first and foremost, an intangible effect that comes about within the sphere of internal experience 

                                                       --   Masahiro Shimoda, Toward Nirvana and From Nirvana

*  *  *  *  *

Of the Mani pearl
To have seen it so clearly
And touched it so nearly
An ovoid rolling and released
Towards the lower mudra bound
Yet never touching down
It remains undefiled
Luminous and pure

* * * * * *
There is a Jewel
Inside the Lotus
Within every one among us
Om Mani Padme Hum –
I understand the sacred words this way
For every he she or it through
All the phyla and orders
Along every branch
Of Being’s Great Tree

* * * * * *

With Body or Without - Meditating with Han Shan on Cold Mountain

This poem by Han Shan strikes me as one of the finest poems about meditation I’ve yet to come across.  Sitting atop of Cold Mountain, Han Shan literally and spiritually became one with his surroundings. As he describes the experience, spirit separates from flesh, in a joyful celebration of meditative death.

* * * *

With body or without
Endowed with self or
Once again unbounded

In this way
Thoughts come and go
As for a long while
Under this rock ledge
I sit completely relaxed

My foot extends lifeless
Amidst these shoots
Of soft green grass
Here at the very summit
The mortal world
Falls into decay

And following
The custom
Among mankind
Fresh wines and fruits
Are now bestowed
Upon the deathbed

 *  *  *  *  *

有身与无身
是我复非我
如此审思量
迁延倚岩坐
足间青草生
顶上红尘堕
已见俗中人
灵床施酒果

For the World Left Beyond It

This is a short poem I wrote this morning in response to reading a poem by Carl Phillips called Leda, After the Swan.  You can read Phillips' fine poem here.

Oh for the love

Of that bit of the world

Left beyond it

That shimmers like a beacon

Just over the horizon

The hope that keeps us going

Fuels us and fools us

Day to day 

Gan Yu - 1 (by Chen Z'iang) - a poem in celebration of the new moon and rebirth

According to astrologers yesterday's new moon ushered in a whole new energy that is sure to give us a much needed creative boost - it is likely to energize us, heart and soul, in the entirety.  So to celebrate this important shift towards the creative end of our life's spectrum (as I am getting ready to publish my new book!), here's the first poem in the Gan Yu cycle by the great Daoist poet Chen Z'iang, which dates from the first half of the 7th Century. 

Gan Yu - 1

The moon declines
Into the western sea
To be reborn anew

The sun’s journey
Has almost begun
Soon to be ascendant

Bright radiance
Fills the East
The sky bursting

Yet cloudy is the soul
At the moment of dawn

So the Ultimate gives birth
To Heaven and Earth

The three realms
Each in its turn
Waxing and waning

Until arriving
At the essence
Of full understanding

Three realms five times
Who is capable
Of taking such a journey

感遇 其一

微月生西海
幽阳始化升
圆光正东满
阴魄已朝凝
太极生天地
三元更废兴
至精谅斯在
三五谁能征

The Use of What Uses Us

The poem is what uses us

Hayden Carruth spoketh thus

We are all but hollow vessels

Of a truth beyond apprehension

But as diligent poets we practice our craft

And as stenographers and cartographers
We keep record hoping it may prove useful
For generations hence
Of the heights and depths

We have traversed along the way
But in truth our poems emerge
In the moment from a mix of things
Not fully responsible
Inasmuch as we remain
Beholden to an ineffable
All the same we are never
So completely laid bare

*  *  *  *  *  *  

Today is Hayden Carruth's birthday, which I learned thanks to a tweet from Copper Canyon Press ...  I don't know too much about Carruth's work but I plan to learn more soon.  With a conversational style, he seems to come from the Mid-Century School of Angry American Poets.  Here is an excerpt from one of his poems written in the Holiday Inn in Washington DC in 1994, the tone of which seems just as apt more than 20 years later:

Fucking each other’s wives in the dens and laundry rooms and pantries.

This is called a party. Some are Democrats, some Republicans, all are fuckers.

They are emboldened by bourbon and vodka and the anticipation of power,

Tomorrow they will arise hungover and wield the resources of the nation.

Sweetheart, it’s a long way from home, miles and miles from your warm bed.

Melodiously at the door: “Are you all right, sir? Are you all right in there?”