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in memory of William Gifford
(1928–2015)
CONTENTS
Pome
˜˜˜
life of i
Cloud Koan
Riddle
I
Zen Sonnet
The Road
Ensō
The Sound of the Sea at the Shore
Mountains of the Heart
˜˜˜
Light Like Water
They Drive Through Childhood in Their Little Cars
The Amiable Child
March: St. John the Divine
The Streaming
Pigeon 7 A.M.
On Riverside Drive
Small as a Seed
She Leans
Island Graveyard
Magicicada
Gold Bug
˜˜˜
The Shrine
Dream Interrupted—
Constructing a Religion
Picture of a Soul
Small Prayer
House of String
Snow, the Novel
Sake
Starry Night
Riddle
A Memory of the Future
My Life
˜˜˜
Crab
˜˜˜
Notes
Acknowledgments
Pome
From flowering gnarled trees
they come, weighing down
the branches, dropping
with a soft sound onto
the loamy ground. Falling
and fallen. That’s a pome.
Common as an apple. Or
more rare. A quince or pear.
A knife paring away soft skin
exposes tart sweet flesh.
And deeper in, five seeds in a core
are there to make more pomes.
Look how it fits in my hand.
What to do? What to do?
I could give it to you.
Or leave it on the table
with a note both true and untrue:
Ceci n’est pas un poème.
I could paint it as a still life,
a small window of light
in the top right corner
(only a dab of the whitest white),
a place to peer in and watch it
change and darken as pomes will do.
O I remember days . . .
Climbing the branches of a tree
ripe and heavy with pomes.
Taking whatever I wanted.
There were always enough then.
Always enough.
There are mountains hidden in marshes,
mountains hidden in the sky.
There are mountains hidden in mountains . . .
mountains hidden in hiddenness.
Mountains and Rivers Sutra
MASTER DŌGEN
life of i
i.
i left the capitalhurrying awayi carried nothing
a dark night before mea dark dark night
but when morning camei stoodfree & alone
casting a seven-league shadowwest
i would go westfollowing the only road
ii.
once i lost a ballit was redi watched it
bouncing down the streetintent on losing itself
in the tall grassi dream about it still
& wake up sweatingfrom the nightmare
iii.
but if i were deprived of sightof sound
if i lost my headwhat would i be?
the question haunts mehow to find myself
when a self is so smallonly an iota
of doubt & longinghow to go on?
iv.
a poet who believed in meis gone
but in his poemsi famously live on
v.
i met a strangeron the street
she towered over meshe looked familiar
but looked at meas if i were the stranger
it was like lookingin a funhouse mirror
at a self stretchedbeyond all recognition
she looked at mewalked on
v!
if i stand on my headif i stand on my head
will you sayi am merelyan empty exclamation?
vii.
time is running outon minutesyears
on what i washave always beeni only wish
to loveevolveto not misuse
what i was givennot!
olittle me
Cloud Koan
Clouds have no history, nothing to tell.
Flying above them or through them,
we cannot penetrate their calm demeanor.
Pushed and powered by wind
(or is there a driving force within them?),
they do not resist. We do not resist.
Then turbulence. Turbulence and a flight
through formlessness until, out of nowhere,
a blue-green coast appears, reminding us
the sun never stopped shining. We just didn’t know.
Questions, so many questions.
Must one have a name? A face?
Must events be describable?
And what is it like to simply
drift, to have no destination?
One envies an existence
without shame or regret.
As a child I wanted to walk on one,
heights didn’t bother me then, but now
I know it would have been impossible,
like walking on the surface of a star.
And so, wandering lonely, I go on
(I must go on), like the rain that falls
with a faceless force on what’s below,
wondering if this one or that one
were to speak, would its words console
my scattered mind or leave it more bereft?
Ink. Ink
on a brush
held by a hand
above me,
beyond me.
Then I am done.
Around me,
white field,
white sky
blending to one.
Where has
the wind gone?
And why is there
no horizon?
Sentry without
a shadow,
I lean a little
but I do not
topple.
To be here.
To be here
is enough.
To say more
would be to say
too much.
Armless, I raise
my arms
to heaven.
Riddle
Puffed like an adder.
Deflated like a balloon.
Tiny or huge, you are
never the right size.
A little man or woman,
you strut, you speak,
you want. You
have delusions.
O little one,
look at yourself,
posturing and ridiculous.
Go now, please go.
But no, without you,
what would I be?
That is the question
I cannot answer
until I am changed into
particle or star, and you,
you drift away as if you
had never been there at all.
You stand so straight and tall
and from afar you could be
a column, but up close I can’t tell
how tall you are. I run my hands
over your marbly façade,
hug your cool circumference,
and remember, or
think I do,
the day you (I mean I!) came into
existence. I was on my back,
naked or nearly so, entertained
by waggling fingers and toes
(I didn’t know the words)
when suddenly, toe in mouth,
I put it all together—my first
eureka! moment—and understood
those fleshy nubs were part of me,
and I of them (here the pronouns get
confusing). A shock and a pleasure.
I haven’t been the same since.
If I climbed you, not an easy thing
to do, I could sit on top of you
the way that flagpole sitters do,
and have a bird’s-eye view
of miles and miles around.
So that is what I’ll do, hand
over hand I climb and somehow
reach the top only to see
how everyone’s thinking aligns
with mine, everyone astride
a pillar of his or her own making,
some near, some far,
some curious, some hostile,
but even so, I wave to all
of them and wait to see
if they wave back.
Zen Sonnet
It was April and we were reading the book about Zen
you were writing your Zen poems and we were talking
about the moment we were in and I was thinking thoughts
that were not Zen: how I know too much too little to teach you
and then I stepped back from each thought and watched it
disappear a horse without a rider over a sharp-edged horizon.
Spring was a pale shade of yellow a green that kept deepening
there was desire and there was a sense of unfolding and I thought
how we can do anything there is no need for an excess of feeling
we can walk through the door that was made for entering and exiting
abandoning the poems that were never ours though we wrote them
to the one who walks into this room when we are gone.
So let us go out into the world and wander a little
beggars with empty bowls in straw hats grass sandals.
The Road
Better a monosyllabic life than a ragged
and muttered one; let its report be short
and round like a rifle, so that it may hear
its own echo in the surrounding silence.
THOREAU
A life: pared to the bone.
Think of a room with no
chair, no bed. Like a monk,
I sit on a black square
in a patch of light.
In my mind, I sit there.
Or, a life on the road
that takes me here, there,
the trees in fall so bare.
And I with just
the rags on my back,
a gnarled stick to lean on.
Your life, held next
to mine, is rich and fat.
You walk with a pack
and wear a big straw hat
that blocks the sun.
You like things loud,
loud songs, and beat
a drum as you walk.
Hoooo there! you call,
but I let you pass.
The days and years
mount up as I walk on
toward a word dark
as night, black as pitch,
still as a held breath.
A place where a night
bird sings. It sounds
like Keats so I stop.
I build a fire,
sleep like the dead,
dream of a bright star,
and wake at dawn,
the sweet bird gone.
Then rise, splash my face
from the stream. Up the road,
a few souls, gray as time,
stand in a patch of shade,
their arms held out.
So it was for this! I think,
This life, this road! This!
and run as I have never
run, back to the beginning,
the very beginning.
They are all
where I left them.
And there is so much to say.
Ensō
zen circles
Thick. Thin.
Open. Shut.
Faint. Dark.
Blurred. Or not.
An oval. An oblong.
An orb. Lopsided.
Or a zero that
contains All.
In one brushstroke,
one breath, it’s done.
Perfectly imperfect.
Or imperfectly perfect.
Today the paper’s blank,
but still I see the ensō,
white on white.
Again, what is it?
The face of the unborn.
The face you’ll have
when you aren’t
In the center of
this one: a dot.
Self-portrait
of what I am
and am not.
The Sound of the Sea at the Shore
As one grows older,
there should be fewer
and fewer words to say.
Each one a few letters
but taken together
meaning something large.
Sea. Sun. Shell. I gather
a little pile, burying,
unburying each, or picking
one up and holding it
to the sun, thinking,
too bright, too bright . . .
It is a game without end
that I lose myself in
as the night begins to fall,
and I shiver a little,
my life a colorless cloak
I fancy more and more.
Like a child I will sit here,
refusing all entreaties to
Come in, come in right now . . .
Can words, a single word,
save me or anyone?
I hold one to my ear,
a roaring shell that says
neither yes nor no.
I listen.
Mountains of the Heart
an artist’s book drawn by Kameda Bōsai in 1816
If I were to pray a prayer, would the prayer unfold
like a scrolling landscape of mountains, rivers, valleys,
where here, there, a figure sits in calm contemplation,
praying, composing a poem, or just being there,
where a boatman poles his slender craft upstream
against a current trying to take him elsewhere,
or a solitary traveler walks on a winding mountain path,
her cloak wrapped tightly around her, her face obscured.
Here, here, and here, mountains and the ghost of mountains,
mountains repeating themselves, mountains everywhere,
and playing over, under, and through it all,
the sound of a lonely qin, echoing, echoing, echoing.
*
Ink on the page. Ink. In Edo two centuries ago,
on the fifteenth day of the third month, the literati
had a party. Among ink sticks and laughter,
sake and toasts, Bōsai drew deep into the night.
Waking the next morning, wondering, turning
each sheet over, disbelieving, Bōsai asked,
“Who drew these things? Who? Not I, Bōsai.
Not Old Dullard, Great Fool, Lazybones.”
And who writes these words that follow me
here, there, like unfamiliar footprints? Who?
Who am I among all this? Surely not the I
that stands here now. No, not that I.
If I am anything, I am only Sage of the Dust,
Scholar of the Small, Historian of the Drifting Clouds.
&nb
sp; But no, even those names are wrong.
Call me Muddled Ink Carrier, Lost Traveler
on a Moonless Night, Mute in a Howling Storm.
And you who are here beside me, tell me your name,
not the name of the one who woke in the usual way
this morning, but the name you have always carried,
both precious jewel and lodestone, secretly inside you.
Are you Heart-Flutterer, Bird Hopping on One Foot,
Fox Dressed as a Monk? Tell me so that we may
speak freely, from the heart, as we never have before.
*
It grows late, later than it has ever been,
as we pass on narrow mountain passes,
some bravely going forth, some coming back
to places of sad and happy remembrance,
so many paths ascending and descending,
past pines that make a gentle susurration,
whispering to any listeners listening,
Change is unchanging! Change changes all!
I must leave you now among mountains,
as the qin plays on and on, its sound advancing
and retreating, both questioning and sure,
while we continue on, the seamlessness
of the present flowing, ever flowing,
past us like the barest breeze.
What you are looking for is who is looking.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Light Like Water
One season bleeds into another.
As rivulets form streams, and streams find rivers,
as rivers lose themselves completely in the sea,
in March, on the first warm day,
we lose ourselves in light. Like rain, it falls
on everyone, the saved and those that aren’t
completely sure. Light like water.
Face upturned to the sun, the invalid body,
no nurse available, drinks with thirst unquenchable.
Would kneel and give thanks if it could kneel.
The light is merciful, complete.
It falls on graves, soaks deep into the earth,
down and farther down, so that the fingertips of the dead
begin to tingle, are warmed, and touching dry faces,