1
CREATIVE POWER
(The Creative)
Heaven/Heaven --- Heaven/Heaven
In the world of New Year art, eyes probe outward
To the week after next, to an object beyond the frame:
The row of faces on the reviewing stand carefully objective,
Conferring state secrets on the brush of no painter.
They will be here, posing, in the week after next,
Providing duration in time. By waiting long enough
We share the parade's end, cleanup of banners,
Much paper, and a torn pair of trousers.
Liu Ling, old man of Bamboo Grove in Honan
Wandered around his garden without clothing.
Visitors and neighbors felt both li and law offended.
Remarks were made. He said: Universe is my home,
This garden my trousers. In heaven's name
What are you doing in my underwear?
2
NATURAL RESPONSE
(The
Receptive)
Earth/Earth --- Earth/Earth
Your hands poised above the saffron pillow
Open, parting like leaves moved by a breeze.
Earth pulls at the three coins. They drop
Into the pattern of light and dark, strong and yielding.
They dance together a moment, then rest. You,
Sitting on the floor with me, assist the oracle.
In a high room under the roof, we wait
for changing wind, sun on leaf, shadow, answer.
Three dozen times, I failed to write the sign of k'un:
The brush wavered. The lines were weak, forced,
Or would not hold together. Only as I assist the brush
On its own path does the sign live, leap from paper,
Move like leaf-shadow. From our different rooms
We watch the varying suns, the drifting leaves.
3
DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS
Water/Thunder --- Mountain/Earth
To think of you without burning, without need,
Walking the breezy lakeshore and listening
To children laughing and the leaves of trees
And you talking of your family, who have more faces
Than a poet has verses. I cannot. Today
I curse this apartness and want you greatly,
Damn my own rooting on this wordy hill
And all the dependent clauses of hope.
One final crow, sculling through the tidal evening
Homeward over fields of summer corn, heavy
And slow, punctuates my thought. Protesting
Between the paragraphs of time, becalmed in summer honey
I enquire in grammars of straw for the syntax of commitment,
Word of certainty, poem of truth in a single sound.
4
INEXPERIENCE
(Youthful Folly)
Mountain/Water --- Earth/Thunder
Today I watched your small self playing:
You hammered pegs into a board, climbed on cushions
And later climbed on me, pulling my hair.
Under a large pillow, you pretended to be turtle
Crawling across the floor. Not being sure
What sound a turtle makes, you made none.
When you stood beside me saying nothing
I hugged you, and you told your mom you liked me.
Your mother, little brown-eyes, is a thief and sometimes mad;
Your father's in jail for fighting half the police force.
In the pool of youth, there may be enough fresh water
To wash away the grime of this inheritance.
Play, brown-eyes. You and I are both
Fools enough to hope tomorrow may be better.
5
CALCULATED WAITING
Water/Heaven --- Fire/Lake
Earlier, I walked on the south slope
In a field of wild strawberries. A brown bird
Nesting under a dwarf maple, the lower leaves
Spread like a roof over her hungry young,
Fluttered away to mislead me. I looked
At the small ones, their mouths wide
In a permanent cry for nourishment.
A cool wind moved over the unripe berries.
Cunningly woven of twigs, each round more fragile
Toward the centre, a whirlpool of wood,
It spins forward a quiet purpose
Into another season. I wait here, tasting
Wild strawberries, which are not your lips.
6
CONFLICT
Heaven/Water --- Wind/Fire
After the rain, in the robin's nest,
Four eggs of a clean and brilliant blue.
How could that bandit, the red squirrel,
Know they were there? He darted upward,
Chattering. The robins fluttered around him,
But he never turned back, thinking only
Of eggs, the delicacy of unhatched bird.
He stole them all. The pine stood empty.
Pine's top grows toward heaven, roots to water.
Somewhere in the trunk is a quietness doing neither,
Doing nothing but be, for bird or squirrel.
If heaven and water work in opposite ways,
Who will deal justly with cone and root?
Perhaps, in this conflict, let us not interfere.
7
COLLECTIVE FORCE
(The Army)
Earth/Water --- Earth/Thunder
I, Huan of Ch'i, address the prince of Ch'in:
It is true that we are a prosperous people,
Our brine wells deep, salt plentiful,
The metal of our salt pans of the best,
Iron foundries productive, fields tilled
And artisans among the finest. This you see,
Approving also the order of your marching troops
Heavy with weapons we do not possess.
And so you conquer. My family scattered,
I write with one remaining reed.
Beware, prince, the itch for power:
In ignorance, we scratch our neighbour.
Beware also, too much salt, my prince.
Even a cupful is enough to choke you.
8
UNITY
(Holding Together)
Water/Earth --- Mountain/Earth
Charles the Great, King of Franks, received a gift
From Bagdad, Harun al-Raschid concluding
That those who share a common Cordovan enemy
Need not look too closely at other creed or banner.
"All rivers of earth," said the Caliph, "flow together
Either at the Bosporus or in the Western Sea.
The tides lean their slow elephantine bulk
Obeying one clock on their damp shores or ours."
Charles in Aachen, for the tenth time
Wound up the chimes of the Turkish clock
And smiled. Most, however, he liked the pachyderm,
Contemplating a larger bedroom to include it.
He mourned the elephant when it died prematurely.
The clock will still work if one is careful.
9
RESTRAINED
(The Taming Power of the
Small)
Wind/Heaven --- Fire/Lake
It is written: under indigo sky, on a night of high full moon
The Duke of Chou prepared to march against the tyrant.
A horse neighed, breath drifting a moment on the chill air
While the harness-menders humming war songs joined
leather to metal.
A dog sniffing along the stones snarled at a fragment of bone.
In a far corner of the courtyard, a turner and his apprentice
Repaired broken spokes in a wagon wheel.
A few clouds, but no rain, moved slowly from the west.
It is not written that an hour before marching
His young wife wept in his arms: "Stay. Don't leave me;
I want you." A little later she said: "Go;
Forgive the weakness in me that spoke before." He went,
Carried her memory into battle, and spared the lives
Of ten prisoners, one grandmother and a crying child.
10
CONDUCT
Heaven/Lake --- Wind/Fire
Bodhidharma came to bring the dhyana-craft,
White water-jewel within the lotus pad. Aha!
He had a dozen doors banged round about
'Til only one remained to open, one inside
Between the first and second eye. Who listened
Learned to ride the ox, returning home to Changsha
Or to Shanhaikuan. "Be priest of oxen, clean
Your stable, dung the field," preached Bodhidharma.
Dongguo, farmer said: "In my dream the Buddha came
And spoke with me; nine thousand demons
Flat beneath his feet, he floated on a throne
Of solid gold; a thousand lightnings played upon his crown!"
Who brought the dhyana unlocked his jaw and sighed,
"Dongguo, do you now grow better rice?"
11
PROSPERING
(Peace)
Earth/Heaven --- Thunder/Lake
In all of Chuang Tzu, no woman says a wise thing.
This is not life as I have lived it. Yang and yin
Together nurtured the egg of history, broke the shell
Of the new year and flew between earth and heaven.
Perhaps he knew merely painted ladies of the Pillow Book,
Tried his cynical and windy song with women
Of two dimensions only. Perhaps a woman of depth
Or height was a thought his time forbade him.
Today I watched a bee aggressively hunting nectar
From a printed blossom on a silk umbrella,
And I have seen an insistent butterfly
Attempt to settle on a painting of milkweed pods.
Peace does not follow from perching always on the left leg
Nor by closing the right eye to half of reality.
12
STAGNATION
Heaven/Earth --- Wind/Mountain
Standstill: the minutes drag their rusty incoherence
Reluctantly around the day. Some ice-age mastodon
Who gulped down time, head thrown back in a frozen roar,
Glares at the roots of this glacial morain
On whose hump of sand I've built my cedar home.
Moveless my mind - but I would have it move:
Beyond my window, crickets in the vetch and rye
Repeat a dusty word. All's in a capsule here.
Colour drained, crumpled, once a dream-pale green and gold
The parchment chrysalis left on the window ledge erupts
This exclamatory butterfly in orange, black and white
Whose damp wings assess my kitchen's hospitality.
Unready to fly upward, tentative, quivering,
Sleeps now at the edge of our table-top plateau.
13
COMMUNITY
(Fellowship with Men)
Heaven/Fire --- Heaven/Wind
Courtyard of ruined temple, snow piled in corners,
Fallen stone, black and broken roof beam, one starving dog.
The Shang priest squinting through white eyebrows
Reads a charred and splintered bone, watched by three.
Hu the scholar says they wait a great Messiah. Scholar Feng
Denies it. Man three, caretaker, shivers here
In a small hut against the inner wall, alone
Since the bronze doors were taken ten years ago.
He tugs at a ragged coat, eyeing this terminal priest
Bent over the ambiguous bone: no clear oracle.
The cracks run every way from the piercing iron
As the lives of the fellowship run their separate days.
In the morning wind, they will scatter again,
Leaving only the caretaker brewing a weak and scanty tea.
14
SOVEREIGNTY
(Possession in Great
Measure)
Fire/Heaven --- Lake/Heaven
That which I have, has me. Along these miles
We reach to fulfill each other. Good space, you said,
That we know ourselves contained, defined, free end
Self-possessed. Hearing the late winter wind
Harrow the hills between, I think of King Wen
The Duke of Chou, and the prison walls that part them. *
I am not your earthly father, but might have been:
My hand moves out to your hand.
Later, from shoulder to elbow, my right arm
Burns all night where you touched me.
Now, how may the flame in your fingers
Bring peace to my flesh? I wonder,
And wondering watch your smile, angelic imp,
Gioconda whose eyes mirror hell and heaven.
*Early legends identified the Duke as the King's son.
He was the regent of Ch'eng Wang, who succeeded the
son of Wen.
15
MODERATION
(Modesty)
Earth/Mountain --- Thunder/Water
(On searching for the radical of the 30th Hexagram)
Now I, imitation of a scholar, shall sit
Chewing my gums in a vague unrest, pretending
To find some inner calm beyond the storm of daubs
Crammed in this wordbook by a Jesuit priest
Working from ancient cast bells and vases.
Unworthy descendant of the grand recorder,
I hunt for the root, the original, the genuine -
And end up inventing one almost as good.
D o w n he multiplied jungle of false characters
(Two or three of them added by my brush)
In one thrust of momentary light through the leaves
Illumining rare old bronze, may come
A glimpse of the muscular primitive
Blinding my eye and stilling my hand.
16
HARMONIZE
(Enthusiasm)
Thunder/Earth --- Water/Mountain
The dog trumpets his being, makes a mock hunt
For groundhog, fox, chipmunk - whatever moves.
Lacking other action he prances below, glares upward
And barks at a pine cone, imagining squirrel,
Inventing claws, the flickering quick eye, flying arch,
Fantasy of motion. Poplar leaves are troops marching.
White-tipped waving banner of tail, dog leads them
Into heroic victory, then sleeps, omitting ancestral sacrifice.
He rests in ignorance of families and gods,
Knowing fathers neither holy nor secular. Dog alone
Peoples his world with present illusion, dragging into dream
No half-formed terrors from tomorrow, adding only
The astigmatic inward eye of history: Perhaps, he thinks,
I am that ancient emperor re-incarnate. His name --?
17
ADAPTING
(Following)
Lake/Thunder --- Wind/Mountain
My friend has returned from Xinjiang-far-north
And we've had time to talk. He says he met
A white-haired man outside the village, hermit
Who named himself Lao Tse reborn. He wanted
Not a handout but an apostle, some follower
To bring the news of him along the road to market.
" -- and whether you will or not, you shall. For I
Must shortly die and you go on. Preach me, inheritor."
Now, how shall we know who is Lao Tse, who not?
Who cannot follow, can't lead; cannot suffer, can't heal.
What joy or strength did he ask of you? What need?
He is lightning resting in the town dump, unmanifest
And drawn back into a midden choked with questions,
A fool who'll tell the three-times-burned to light fresh fire.
18
REPAIR
(Decay)
Mountain/Wind --- Thunder/Lake
Dead foxes: These played with their kits at the burrow
Or lay, nose between paws in the warm sand.
Decayed and toothy, they sprawl in the gully
Under a hum of flies, poisoned or shot
At the close of winter. Carefully upwind of April breeze
On the end of a long-handle spade, I bury the solid parts.
In what remains, wet, pale things feed and squirm;
At the finish of foxes, they announce a new beginning.
The fox in the mind plays with truth: What is real?
Mountain wind ruffles the white patch, the red-brown fur
As he bounds across the clearing, distracts the inward eye
From the slow decay of kings and princes,
Kingdoms and principalities. Ah, fox,
May we hold back corruption from some part of love?
19
PROMOTION
(Approach)
Earth/Lake --- Earth/Thunder
On the sand hills, we're burning yellow birch
And waiting for an uncertain Spring. The black dogs
Run miles away, forget food time, sleep fitfully
In unaccustomed corners. Air is neither cold
Nor comfortably warm. What to wear? Shall I
Handle wood with gloves, or afterward, peering
Through the gray morning, pull the fine splinters
And wonder at my dullness in a nothing day?
Down country, lake remains frozen but soft,
Sagging under the fishing huts, the air damp
And heavy, slow with unfallen snow. In this month
Patience or impatience sprouts no quicker crocus.
Dogs return, heads low, eyes watery. Unhappily
They regret too-successful approach to a friendly skunk.
20
CONTEMPLATING
Wind/Earth --- Mountain/Earth
Sitting in the lotus, Kwan Yin's daughter looks inward,
Tugging a black shawl around her shoulders:
Settling into morning meditation. Her gaze,
Drawn away from the blue room and a hundred small blue
flowers
Blooms now behind, beyond the visible garden.
Turning to that will, flowers, room, quality of blue,
All things that know her bow to the compact circle
Of her stilled beauty, bend through her golden aura.
Magnetic, quietly intense, unmoving you achieve
What you do not attempt. Drawn down to you
The very walls contain like a curving hand
The blossom of your being. Silent, you may be
Repeating a mantra. Adoration is a mantra
Midway between invocation and offering.
21
REFORM
(Biting Through)
Fire/Thunder --- Water/Mountain
To withdraw. leaving the shell of self marching the boulevard,
To mumble no bones, no longer hear the drum
Nor see the waving banner. Most difficult of all
To hold back response, both pity and fear, yet ache
In awareness of every tick-tock passing, alive to time,
The alarmclock need for recognition of one right day.
Under heaven, no greater hunger. What if never
Again the arms rise together on that desirable hour,
The proud teeth locked on the indigestible moment?
Our way out is inward. Retreat, as always,
For collecting the broken bits of our inheritance,
Wiping off dust, dirty fingerprints, the garbage
Of immobile human sediment. What flashes clean
Shall shape us again: faceted, prismatic, the biting edge.
22
GRACE
Mountain/Fire --- Thunder/Water
Morning wind shakes holiday snowdust from pines;
Winter sun twinkles the facets of the world
With the sharp and manifold colours of a crystal
Turning slowly on invisible thread.
Deep white unbroken except for the ski track
Of my daughter, and some blurred footprints
Where a visitor headed for the south door,
Waded into a snow drift, and turned back.
The fourteen who drank tea at our table are gone
With the young boy who frowned in concentration
As he lifted his cup. Again blizzard, drifting,
Heaped heavy on the bending pine. Over the gully
Beneath maple and basswood in a pale filigree,
Ghost trillium yields to winter in a dream of spring.
23
DETERIORATION
(Splitting Apart)
Mountain/Earth --- Earth/Earth
When you first entered the school, there was no doubt:
Beneath this roof I was teacher and you, student.
Only as the wheat waved green and golden into flour
And green and gold again, I watched you grow
While in your growing the schoolhouse, aging, shrank
Like some thin, abraded shawl about your shoulder.
To the drums and bugles of the autumn sun
You ran laughing after a ball down the dusty yard.
Now you are woman, and I no longer sure
Who is teacher, who student. Behind my desk
I cross out parts of a half-written poem.
Today I am flayed and peeled and torn apart
By your going. I think, in the dust the wheat
Will not grow this year. Let me help you pack your books.
24
RETURNING
Earth/Thunder --- Earth/Earth
Through the last of corn-snow, climbing the hill crest,
Every few steps breaking through the crust, laughing.
My friend found it easier slogging ! through the pines,
Calling to me from the wood's edge.
Alone on the hill, my eyes traveled down the sky
Through that inverted shining sea of improbable blue
And caught the tips of maples beyond the ridge:
Milky smoke-lavender, memory-colour of you.
Time and my breath held a moment there.
Surprised and pleased among maples, I return to you,
Unexpectedly waiting for me in the spring-glad trees.
Tender as hope or the hint of buds returning
Must my heart become to chalice the gift of you
Returning again in lavender smoke on a blue-white hill.
25
INNOCENCE
Heaven/Thunder --- Wind/Mountian
Here in the thaw at winter's end
I try again to write you. My words rebel,
Refuse to march, or sidle slantwise, conspiring,
A double agent who'll deal me in the marketplace.
I suspect myself, doubt the innocence of my intent,
Know I've not found harmony, finger the bruises
Of that long, despairing fall from Eden.
Shall we move beyond desire in that unintended land?
Not yet ready, I am not yet ready
To walk firmly from the manipulated city
Beyond the web of your or my idea
Of the right, the regular, the coherently ordered,
To take the walk for its own sake
Or the hush of wet snow under my foot.
26
POTENTIAL ENERGY
(The Taming Poser of
the Great)
Mountain/Heaven --- Thunder/Lake
Yu the Great, daily terrified by thoughts of flood
Led the people to tame wild water. Those he picked
To build dikes, clear channels, raise dams of earth
Were men who followed his plan, inventing nothing.
Rising early, he saw the pattern of ditches cross the plain,
Heard the call of the day's first carriers of dirt,
Movers of mounds in wicker baskets. Through order
accomplished
He drew back to himself strength for another dawn.
Officers of Yu could not stop what once they started,
Knowing only to do, do more, do once again
For Yu, whose character was thereby strengthened
Through obedience of many. Alone he stood
On a hilltop, searched alien sky for a raincloud.
Yu the Great ate seldom at his family table.
27
NOURISHING
Mountain/Thunder --- Earth/Earth
"And," said Wu the baker. "I will wonder
As you pack and leave for that other land
Why my feelings are split like pine cones
Chewed by the red squirrel and scattered. Hurting,
Wanting to hold you and cry, all I can do
Is be confused. After all, it is I who helped you,
Leaving as you want to leave from things and places
Not any more for your growing. I should rejoice.
"To feel one thing, to find the fresh-made loaf
In all ways perfect, a delight to touch, to smell,
To share with friend. No crumb of doubt,
No hiding from the single flame of cleansing joy
That sweeps away the dust of too-much-me.
I think, perhaps, that may be so in Heaven."
28
CRITICAL MASS
(Preponderance of the
Great)
Lake/Wind --- Heaven/Heaven
Qian the courtesan, who bloomed in morning-glory silk
Of pale blue, magenta, lavender, violet, was daily gathered
By a different hand. All were hands gold-banded, entitled
To reach in fat purses belted heavily to fat bellies
Or carried by a thin servant waiting at the courtyard wall.
She wondered, sometimes, where they went beyond the
garden,
To what possibly insignificant but varying fate,
What doubtful greater joy, proud passion, soaring dream.
One, they said, had ridden away to war
And died, and come no more. And one, stroking
His beard, walked thoughtfully to a monastery
And disappeared. Of most, no tea-time news returned.
Quan, ill and dying, was unsure if she had held a thousand
men
Or the same man one thousand times.
29
DANGER
Water/Water --- Mountain/Thunder
I am squatting on this log in the wet sand,
Head in my hands, being sick. Each time
The voice of that old man screams in my mind
I retch again. We were supposed to have killed a prince,
You and I, in the name of freedom. Here
We have something that was almost a corpse already,
Tangled in the lines and hooks he'd brought
To fish in a leaky boat. He didn't fight back.
We had to pick a gray, damp day for this --
Or something picked it for us. What anger I had
Is soggy, and my brave intent lost in a sheet of fog.
If by this we made liberty for ten thousand men,
What have we made ourselves? Is it better,
Finally, to be a free monster than a caged saint?
30
SYNERGY
(The Clinging)
Fire/Fire --- Lake/Wind
Let it be that I, while blinded in this temple,
Hold to thy radiance through my own and private night
And like sandalwood consumed at a shining high altar
Brighten thee more. And yet, from thy touch
To know the morning glory rides in beauty on the vine,
Brave trumpet to that fire marching up the distant sky
As I to thee, thy celebrant. Great goddess,
Help me move beyond all suns that rise
And all that set. Console an aging votary
Whose footprints vanish in the autumn dusk,
Gone to worship in a deep and fragrant darkness
Hungry enough to gulp down gods and devils,
Vast enough to lose every last collapsing sun
Their feeble, futile alchemy may spawn.
31
ATTRACTION
Lake/Mountain --- Heaven/Wind
Yugong Feng, with help from a hardwood pole
Scuttles diagonally down the slope of a deep ravine,
Moving crablike through imagined ancient water.
From the fine sand his foot knocks loose three stones
Which roll and hop together to the gully floor.
Feng, resting, holds to his eye the largest rock,
Smooth convex planes printed with small immobile shells,
Ocean made rigid, long courtship of life and death.
And on one round corner - ah! lovely, shapely:
The frugal outline of a marine snail, four-chambered,
Lightly traced as the memory of a near-forgotten kiss
Wooing the unresponding stone. Feng nods:
"Hah! I am not so old as you, friend rock,
And somewhere here I've seen new ginseng growing."
32
CONTINUING
(Enduring)
Thunder/Wind --- Lake/Heaven
That these moments live: wind and thunder,
Breathing and bellylaughs, large and small
In a Yes that links our laughter to the rolling world.
Prince Chi dissembles, feigns madness in a mad time,
Fingers his beard and waits the dawn-wind. Lovingly
He sips the lees of wine pressed from a good year's grape.
Love's the wind that moves the sampan of the sun
To ride the tide of returning day.
She murmurs: how sharp your beard!
The women nod: her neck and chin are marked;
For some of us the night is less than lonely.
The guards will say: Prince Chi is not entirely mad;
He hums and whistles - look, by the early candle,
In the silence of his cell he writes a love poem!
33
RETREAT
Heaven/Mountain --- Heaven/Wind
Leaping over frosted leaf, two dogs play in melon patch,
Black, with dirty white Ch'an apron-bibs on their necks,
Tumbling, rolling in faded grass under grey sky.
Zhang watches, mountain farmer, raiser of melons
And snow peas and other food in season. He nods,
Understanding the bounding joy of dogs, not knowing
Why at the same time he should feel sorrow
When the first snowflake melts on dark uplifted muzzle.
Retreat of summer down the mountain: Zhang sees
Remaining yellow leaves toward the valley floor
Slow-moving in breeze like waving dog-tails, vanishing
Into year-end as four-foots, barking, disappear in bush.
They run inventing no tomorrow, unknowing winter chill
One snowflake brings to wrinkled farmer Zhang.
34
GREAT POWER
Thunder/Heaven --- Lake/Heaven
Master Ho, great among the fang-shih,
Wrestled three days the Lord of the Dark Quarter.
Holding still the crouching azure dragon of the east,
Other arm fending the pale and hungry western tiger
He rooted his toes down to heavy gray bedrock
Until his eyeballs were level with the fresh grass.
Unmoving in his inward strength, firm as the axle
Of a cart to carry boulders, the Master endured.
In a flood of icy rain, tortoise and serpent
And the god under his black, wind-swollen banner
Flung themselves against him. Yet he prevailed,
Winning from the clashing winds and waters
A new ancestral temple. This he did because
He could not bear to go home and face his wife.
35
PROGRESS
Fire/Earth - Water/Mountain
They have said in the Imperial City: Change the signs.
Undoubtedly the sun of progress warms the earth
And, rising, widens our horizon. I am one
Who works with brush and tablet of ink,
Knowing there must be change, and tides, and daybreak,
Yet I move uneasy, feeling something of golden value
About to slip away, wondering what prize we lose
When burning our brushes, discarding ancient signs.
Ch'in Shih Huan Ti burned many books,
But not the Changes of Chou. Something in language
Is precious. Vigorously uprooting the signs
What do we tear from the earth, grunting,
Pawing and snuffling like a wild boar? Perhaps
We punish our own city, both heart and head.
36
CENSORSHIP
(Darkening of the
Light)Earth/Fire --- Thunder/Water
Early frost has bruised and bent the oat-stalk,
Sending a wounded sun limping toward winter.
Corsa the monk is dead, and Tai Hsu the bishop
Who ordained him, and Suzuki who gave him incense
For his friend in America. Firm in sanctuary
The gray calligrapher winces, flexing cold fingers,
Mourning the springtime years: 0 Lord of Light,
Point us your path to the last kiss, the last goodbye.
Who has not taken refuge falls stricken for the world
And for himself, slashed in belly and thigh
By the icy blade that cripples the oat,
Hearing in the steady tread of winter down the hill
Alaric pounding on the Roman gate,
That final dusty sunset in Pompeii.
37
FAMILY
Wind/Fire --- Fire/Water
High wind: ghost of a moon shivers in morning sky.
Stacking cordwood, I wear your old jacket:
Raising my arms, I smell your sweat, my son.
And think of you in a far province, sweating
While you cut bigger trees than mine. This wind
Cries snow, whispers long winter, gossips a
Chattering conversation with my elbows and knees.
Resting, I look down the road for your coming.
Re here for the holiday at the year end:
Your mother and I have a new quilt for you
And your woman. Stay a while with us
On the hill, and we'll remember the winters
When you were small, and make home-talk,
And perhaps your sister will join us.
38
CONTRADICTION
(Opposition)
Fire/Lake --- Water/Fire
Fire and water: Unwise to promote unity by force.
Instead, say the Annals of Lu, let the Emperor prove
He can handle a plough, let the Empress weave
At the loom. So, through categories of warp and woof,
Furrow and seed, we shall establish order.
Millennia add to our pattern and style
Until the raw, uncultivated question, the wild
Barbarian name for freedom is woven invisibly over.
Yellow Turban or Eighth Route Army, query remains:
From what ground or force grows your right to rule?
The cry for freedom becomes a ceremony,
Emperor symbolically scratching the Imperial Garden.
If one is planning to assassinate duke or prince,
How difficult when you first must bow from the waist!
39
OBSTACLES
Water/Mountain --- Fire/Water
We walked in the park, moving through a memory of summer.
When I stopped and turned your shoulders to face me,
Searching your eyes, you asked, "What do you see?"
The deepest eye sees a different hour, ear hears
Ticking of another clock than yours, not a mountain
Between but a moment thinner than shadow of a thread,
A rice-tissue obstacle, translucent ghost of a fog
Sliding between my hand end yours: obstruction.
Here we are, yet we are not now. The direct path
Is hardly the shortest: Better to go our temporal ways,
Get reborn and return from the other side smiling,
Peeling off wrapping-paper shrouds and ribbons
To find at last that fragmentary instant
When the moss will keep still under our toes.
40
LIBERATION
(Deliverance)
Thunder/Water --- Water/Fire
Ragged, torn wing and pallid colour
Imply this once-imperial butterfly
Did by some doubtful grace outlive the winter.
Accidentally trapped within my Eastern window
It flutters hopefully against the glass.
Northern slope and tree-protected glade
Yet deep in snow deny the immanence
Of thunder, yellow crocus, April rain.
Stubbornly it taps upon the pane,
And I must help it taste the leafless field,
The faded sun, the frosted windy night.
Out and away, the scrap of black and orange
Veers drunkenly into the Western wind,
Staggering toward one last late dance with life.
41
DECLINE
(Decrease)
Mountain/Lake --- Earth/Thunder
Lao Bai, white-haired, peers at untimely mist:
Midwinter thaw draws up the melted snow,
Insubstantial unfeatured white blending into gray.
Underfoot, what holds with earth is heavy,
Slowing the loaded firewood sledge, clinging
To boot and ankle, tiring eye and bone.
He halts, brushing off a stump, and sits,
Hand on knee, at the clearing edge.
One thin pine is bent, one broken
Under the pale shroud. Two more
Lean crookedly upon each other. Far off,
A high branch cracks and falls.
In the memory of Lao Bai, cool haze obscures
The name and face of another boyhood friend.
42
BENEFIT
(Increase)
Wind/Thunder --- Mountain/Earth
My son, there were only two logs remaining
Of those you carried through drifts to the hilltop.
The stove was hungry. I took the red maul,
The axe and iron wedge, to split maple.
Reading the tree life, searching wood-history
For a weak line, I drove the maul, remembering
How easily you did this. Harder for me, but friend Scott
Does it at ninety-four; and we've only twenty degrees of frost.
To those with maul and axe it has been said:
You are the elite of the world; history will avenge you.
This I doubted once, with my friends on the Long Trek,
Winter marching in, and everybody nursing icy toes.
Not any more. Even Menachem, who hid in the Yeshiva --
History will avenge him, if he can re-write it.
43
RESOLUTION
Lake/Heaven --- Heaven/Heaven
When Master Li walked slowly to the Western Gate
The guard, under instruction, asked why he wished to leave.
Gazing toward the desert, he replied, "For no reason.
The wind is behind me." The guard shook his head:
"Every traveler leaving or arriving shall have reason.
Master, remain here. I cannot allow you to pass."
"Very well," smiled the bearded one. "Have you a brush,
A scroll, an ink tablet, a place where I may sit?"
After an hour the Master handed over the scroll,
Saying, "Here are a hundred reasons." Guard admired:
"Venerable One, it's beautiful, but I cannot read."
"Give it to your officer," the Master called, striding
Into the desert. Officer Yin scratched his head:
"He wrote one hundred times the character for Reason."
44
TEMPTATION
(Coming to Meet)
Heaven/Wind --- Heaven/Heaven
T'ao Ch'ien, after resigning the government job
Returned alone to his boyhood home. Walking
He wrote poems in his head. Arriving
He was greeted by a woman of the village
Who offered him tea and wine, asked
About his health and life in the capital, whether
He had written much lately. Her eyes crackled.
She leaned into each reply. He sat, drank tea,
Watched her walking back and forth again, again.
While he answered she remained calm, then moved
As a new question brightened within her. He looked
At the way her hands shifted, dry leaves rustling.
A fire moved with her, armies marched, bamboo burned.
He said: this is now a two-poet town.
45
ASSEMBLING
Lake/Earth --- Wnd/Mountain
Knowing that we're neither of this race nor religion
We carry gifts for the occasion. Naming of a first son
Has brought together white-haired bustling grandma
Busily pouring tea and feeding everyone
(Have another cookie; I'm not counting them)
Cousins aunts uncles little and big
Grandpa telling stories about when he was ten
And youngest daughter looking hopefully for an audience.
Much laughter. Great opening and closing of doors
And peeking breathless into crib of newborn
(Look: doesn't he have his father's nose!)
While at the heart of this family hurricane
Sleeps the unheeding innocent hub of the evening
Doing purely and competently nothing whatever.
46
ADVANCEMENT
(Pushing Upward)
Earth/Wind --- Thunder/Lake
They said to the novice, "Keep climbing the stair;
At first you'll need only your confidence. Then,
On the second step, a few light sacrifices --
Nothing to alarm you. The third step is taken
Unopposed, like storming an empty city, undefended.
The fourth will speak to your questing feet
Of other worlds than this. Continue. Walk on.
At the top, even for us, is darkness. Persevere."
Eyes looking down over the white-gowned shoulder,
Strong cheek-bones, firm small chin. Beginning
Of a smile. Each feature distinct, architectural.
From the arched brow a broad slope to the hairline,
The hair brushed back smoothly. "Goodbye, goodbye:
Let my eyes hold you. Like growing tree, no return to
ground."
47
ADVERSITY
Lake/Water --- Wind/Fire
On a Print by Raphael Soyer
Locked in that rectangular paper pattern of blue and brown
She poses, resting between pirouettes. Perhaps,
Turning her back on the mirrored room, she watches
From her window the city street below: taxi, trolley,
Window-shoppers in their own slow dance, pedestrians
Pouring into the crosswalk, wave against wave
Meet and part, flow around, rise in a frothing tide
Over the curb. Her toes point outward on the parquet floor.
Leave her at the window, Raphael. She's dreaming
Of the Christmas angel cresting a triple entrechat:
She'll not touch earth tonight. I'll be Igor
In Spectre of the Rose waiting as she waits,
Silently applauding the strength, grace and balance,
The never-choreographed electric leap that yet may be.
48
THE SOURCE
(The Well)
Water/Wind --- Fire/Lake
Your daughter has been with us and returned;
We think she was happy here. Falling in snow
She laughed. Playing, she became tired and rested.
Because of the holidays we let her eat favourite foods.
She moved quickly from one game to another
And only in the last hour, on our way to the village
I looked at her face, bundled between hat and shawl:
Her eyes are like wells. In older agrarian times
The well, nourishing at the centre, stood as pivot
For the turning fates of men. Farmers and princes
Game and went; well remained. Here are small
Inexhaustible oceans bright with dreamfish,
Indwelling light. Farmers and princes may do less
Than follow the dream in women's eyes.
49
CHANGING
(Revolution)
Lake/Fire --- Heaven/Wind
It is useless, at any rate, to halt the waterfall:
The melting, flowing, immediate moment
(Momentarily vanishing and reappearing Other)
Frozen, entombed in the name of sanity,
Social continuity and payment of mortgage.
Eyeing the swallow in ecstatic right-now flight
Flickering in and out of instantaneous reality
And preferring to dream of a yellow cow
I cling to smoke of my ancestral fire
Denying the whirling, grassgreen joy of the dancing monk
- Oh, damn me all laughing Taoist priests
Tumbling like plum-leaves through my garden gate!
Spring wind or autumn wind rippling my pond:
All seasons change -- and all return.
50
COSMIC ORDER
(The Caldron)
Fire/Wind --- Lake/Heaven
The waiter might have marched with the Eighth Route Army.
He observed the young woman, smiling, give the man
A red rose and two buds. They laughed and shared poems,
Eating Eight-Jewel Duck, fine noodles, and a thick soup,
Specialty of the house. After they finished their tea
The man said, "Thank you." Waiter shook his head:
"That's how they say it in the North. Different here."
Silently, he also criticized handling of chopsticks.
The man's house is named Lu-Ger-Shan, in English
Greensong Hill. His friend from Szechuan says,
"Green is another word at home: not that." A teacher
Has corrected one of the woman's poems: grammatical,
Not street talk! Too many chia-chieh, borrowed errors.
Excuse my use of the Wade-Giles; should be Putonghua.
51
SHOCKING
Thunder/Thunder --- Water/Mountain
Thunder above, thunder below. Who will laugh ha! ha!
In the berserk teeth of the wind? One dwarf candle
Probes the inner chamber of my fear: A thing undone
Or done too often calls a bolt to crown my guilty heed.
No, I've no such ego to applaud this booming score
Orchestrated for an audience of one. I'm shrunk by storms
Impersonal to me in space beyond this homely star,
Whose lightning chokes a spectrum past my range.
The moth within the pane can't see what holds him back,
Nor we our self-made fear through human eye;
This stage outcrowds the theatre of the mind.
Consider, then, our corporate fate, whose sins outride
The storm-god's mad halloo, demand a rude specific jolt
From cosmic engines measured to our pride.
52
MEDIATION
(Keeping Still)
Mountain/Mountain --- Thunder/Water
Today in the sand hills I limbed the red pine,
Cutting the long logs. The morning mist worked in
Through my shirt. My sweat worked out ,
Too many pines were down, piled on each other:
The reddish tan branches blurred in green needles,
A tangle of brush strokes, images overlaid,
Tumult of bark and cone, branch and twig,
A rich confusion, texture on texture woven.
Rest follows movement. I lean on the axe,
Breathing the wet and brilliantly acid air
Among the linear stillness of these poles
Thirty-forty years growing. For part of an hour
I hold my mind here, moveless where the wind combs
The ghost of tree-tops. Beyond nothing is joy.
53
DEVELOPING
Wind/Mountain --- Fire/Water
To continue: The feet follow each other onward
Where the path is an unsure memory overgrown
With thistle and spike-leaf and wild pea,
The heart's music raggedly screeched by a rusty crow;
Agitator of a thousand pine cones. Continue:
It is only the going on that makes it worth.
But not alone if I can help it -- no tree
On a mountain-top signals to an empty world.
I will greet you yet, whether you hide in silence
Wrapped in a vacuum under the glacier, or sing
Lullaby among the orchestra of chaos. The wild goose,
Finding food, lifts a music of abundance to his brothers.
Here is one feather, dropped from the clouds,
And a message: Comrade, I wish you health!
54
SUBORDINATE
(The Marrying
Maiden)
Thunder/Lake --- Water/Fire
I have walked alone in rooms that knew your dancing
And waited in corners where we have laughed together,
Looked through misted windows marked by long-ago rain
At a tiny garden of dead herbs we once planted.
In a dry and windy season, the echo of your singing
Makes small music in the narrow stairways of now.
That you love another is acceptable to me and right,
Who see all things as becoming and passing away.
Your care gave meaning to moments changing, even to lamp
And door and colony of books. Yet you were never caught
In these: much of you will waltz barefoot through any
marriage
Unheld by plate or cup or gentled hand. Therefore again
In a time beyond this, rosemary, tarragon, mint
And your smile quicken a spring I hope to recognize.
.
55
ZENITH
(Abundance)
Thunder/Fire --- Lake/Wind
Trouble in our time: From what high excellence
Shall we decay, leaving our heritors to dig
More than barbaric rubbish from the ruins?
When all our solid juggernauts are dust
What clarity of purpose may remain?
We who rode the thunder and the flame
Lift past the fanged and taloned years
Our crumbling bribe for memory's jade alter.
In the chariot tombs of Anyang, you today
May see the wheels, the axle and the singletree
Outlined in earth, all empty space from which
The wood has long departed. The bronze fittings
And ritual vessels chant to us of fullness,
Completion, the firm and elegant beauty in ting and ku.
56
TRAVELING
Fire/Mountain --- Lake/Wind
They said in the village: He was a sign-painter
And a tramp. After he left, they remembered
How he played the clown, grinned as they laughed
At him and things he did. He was a friend
To servants and musicians. A dancing girl
Followed him to the bridge on Fire Mountain.
He said, "I hurt," when she kissed him goodbye.
For three days nobody noticed his room was empty.
Perhaps he knew us better than we ourselves.
With his going something of us is gone,
And our joking about the evening hearth is hollow
As if in his packsack he carried away closely
The meaning of our time and place. Maybe
It was he who stood still, and we who wander.
57
PENETRATING INFLUENCE
(The
Gentle)
Wind/Wind --- Fire/Lake
For John Heimler
When Lin our teacher returned from prison, we met,
Eight of us, among lemon blossoms in a Southern garden.
The sea breeze moved through his hair, still dark at sixty;
Calmly, he continued the lesson interrupted by iron bars.
"You and I, we will not hide behind the mask of Law --
We allow ourselves to be discovered. Sometime, somehow
We were there. That which was there whispers: Lin,
remember
You are not better or different. You are salt in the wave."
Regretting the prison years, one of us asked, "What of
anger?"
"Yes, there is personal anger. No movement without it,
Nor could you trust my love. But say then
To your childhood's anger: Look, that is done."
Laughing, Lin helped our host's little daughter
To climb on his knee and put her arms around him.
58
ENCOURAGING
(Joy)
Lake/Lake --- Wind/Fire
The lord, being flattered, laughed at his high table
And laughed again when they told him of Ch'u Yuan,
Poet and honest man, who drowned himself
Because he was not believed. Giving of advice,
The courtiers add, must be carefully done
To avoid offence. Ch'u Yuan inadequately admired
Gold robes of state, quality of dumplings and tea
At the high table. So, in the lighted boats, they sought him
As we in the dragon ships tonight, laughing still,
Light the joyful lanterns and prowl the lake
For the unforgotten body of a poet and suicide.
Day five, month five, with a chunk of festival moon
We celebrate him of less fortune than we:
Doubly cursed by honesty and the goddess of poetry.
59
REUNITING
(Dispersion)Wind/Water --- Mountain/Thunder
Feng the carpenter, one holiday in the park
Jokingly encouraged to wrestle with Young Quian
Removed his jacket, settled bare feet on the ground
And crouched, circling for the first hold.
As his foot slipped, he read the confident smile,
Knew he'd misjudged or moved too slowly.
Thrown heavily to the grass, he sat up aching,
Shook his head, sneezed, combing out straw and a dead ant.
Surmised from one defeat the nature of all:
All things gone, all attributes, possessions,
His house of hardwood beams, family, boyhood friends
All shrunk to a loss no bigger than a wrestling throw
And himself alone on the floor of reality
Watching the pitiless victor smiling down.
60
LIMITATIONS
Water/Lake - Mountain/Thunder
That of which there is only one: hazelnut,
Larch and juniper. In all this walkabout
There are less than two of these, hazel
To the north edging a copse of basswood,
Larch on the sunrise rim of a pine forest,
Juniper low and spreading in the south pasture
Near a broken cedar fence. Each solitaire
Carved sharp in my mind without a copy,
Lacking halfhearted imitation, slurred echo,
Double-goers that are almost, not quite,
The thing itself. You also, no avatar or overtone
Of any god or music before you. Most human,
Most you, rare reality minted once only
Whose presence I have somewhat known.
61
INSIGHT
(Inner Truth)
Wind/Lake --- Mountain/Thunder
"In the Middle Kingdom," the story-teller said,
"Live two seekers of truth who are half blind.
This may not matter: they look first within themselves
And celebrate with a gentle joy each inner veil that falls.
Some think they hunt the shadow of the phoenix
Or other half-mythical and fast-dissolving bird
Unfledged of the mind's frail shell. Battle-winds rise
And die around them. They drink white wine together."
Raising their eyes from the wine-glass, each smiled
At the blurred underwater image of the other,
But saw entire and clear the glow of another truth,
Different, but compatible with their own. Joined hands,
Like the linking verities, and burning faces
Turned toward the sky: "Comrade, the moon is nearly full."
62
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
(Preponderance of
the Small)
Thunder/Mountain --- Lake/Wind
Firewood: Five cords of maple I've stacked in the bush,
Carrying it by armload down the aisles of pine.
Next year's warmth, it will winter here
And dry slowly into summer and fall.
Holding the logs in the bend of my right arm
I hold the fires of a year ahead,
The meals, the long evenings, snowshoes
Hung against the door, neighbour talk over tea.
Saw, axe and cordwood: small things, common
To other lands than this. The work I do
Brothers men in villages I'll never see.
A hundred times, and another hundred
I cut, lift and carry, making small motions
That fill the cooling days with potential sun.
63
AFTER THE END
Water/Fire --- Fire/Water
Mending road, and feeling in the footsoles
Uprooting of rough stone ballast by the cloudburst,
Washout of gravel and sand in delta fans,
Sudden sharp ravine like a small river gorge,
Roof torn from the ant-nest and rushed away,
Then smoothed out, the road moved over on a curve
And spread in the field. Even with the new ditch,
This completion is another beginning, prelude to rain.
Wheelbarrow, rake, long-handle spade. Cotton gloves
Because these hands have weathered sixty years.
Red ant, madly hiding eggs, sees the path-mender
As a hovering cloud of power, not known directly
But by his works: a vast and blurred divinity.
Resting, the road-god hunts the sky for future storm.
64
BEFORE THE END
Fire/Water --- Water/Fire
May-Blossom Chang, when her father died, dressed demurely
In silk severely cut, with no adornment. Slowly
She walked among the visitors, careful as a fox
On thin ice. With thoughtful deliberation
She poured tea for old friends of the family.
This done, she stood quietly with hands folded
Or sat with her aunt. Only her eyes moved,
Following the young men who talked with her uncle.
Later, when all the uncles and cousins, tiring,
Have returned to their homes, May-Blossom
Will stand for a moment in the moonlit gate
Holding to her lips a bud of the peach tree
And remembering that at least one man
Found her supremely attractive in mourning.
Afterword
That work is done. i've closed the Chinese book,Remembering an aging Argentine who said, "Imagine --
There are volumes (old friends) on that very shelf
I'll never look through again." He might have sensed,
With his angular appreciation of adjectives, there remained
Some complex nouns yet to be modified, two or maybe three
Inventions not otherwise copyright in the publishing jungle.
My friend, at forty-seven, asks, "Is there more?"
There's always more. it's just that coming down,
Crashing from that high of creation (imitating God)
You don't know when the thing will hit you again
And keep looking around for unlikely new causation.
It isn't only the Church can't tell when life begins:
Man, we don't know what prods the first word onto paper
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Clif Bennett
RR2, Hawkstone
Ontario L0L 1T0
I Ching Sonnets has been reprinted and adapted for the Web by Alan Taplow
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