I.
By Tushara’s well-spring
Came sage Dai-chien,
At the third, fourth throw of Yi Jing.
Law had decreed for him a path
To observe and crack such eldritch math,
Sunk behind twelve centuries of sand.
When first moved step in this ancient land
Which hid a great and subterranean kingdom,
The man, who dropped half-dead,
Was taken to a house of pleasuredom.
Within this state of spectral wake
And wood with wanton choice,
He spoke: dreadful yet afar,
Where fumes of opium lift his voice.
How from this convalescence he stood
Alive again, out of death’s dominion,
Then chased his spirit, bereft of mood
Down a staircase with no door—
’Twas here, in the temple’s belly
That his breath found passageways unseen,
Wedging between slabs of collapsed stone
And emerging unto halls unknown.
For forty weeks in a straight line all
Endeavored to clean the rubbled place,
Until they mapped forgotten zones
Removed from time and space—
And under a divine roof cast above
The mountain, all fell and awed
Once discovered, heaped in the dark
The ageless and arcane knowledge of God.
II.
My language speaks for no people;
There is no lifeworld in it contained.
And of the divine everyday, I hold no key,
Nor can I sing the light or the shade.
I become outside reason, outside might.
I do not belong with the Earth or other stars,
And while you can sense my eyes and limbs
As not unlike yours, I am already turning.
The colours of your flags, the symbols you utter,
The colossi you are all dying to become,
I have overcome already.
I am again, so I rise before.
After my ink there shall be silence.
Go now, and tell the seated people,
Then reach the people that never stay—
Tell all that such eternal garden,
This promised land, is here:
Shying in the winter of May.
III.
Permanence and transience are perhaps basic both,
What we hold in the open palm of a hand at morn,
(Be it an eternity, be it a whisper), is maybe torn
While always whole, between two shadows.
He sought for her once emerged from the cave;
They met in the ristobar on the Qinhuai stream,
And took tea and talked for an hour. ‘In dream,
I saw your infinite sight speak to me thrice.
And each uttering the same potency as the first.
Changing — always. But ever staying the same.’
She betrayed a half-proud smile and kissed him
Long enough to hurt him; Her voice: ‘I speak—
For truly you have met me many times already.
I am the one with many names and many forces,
My work is not principle but practice. You wish
To work knowing the way but the way bifurcates.
I have as many ways as my becomings. You miss
My calling because you are restless to hear it.’
That said, they both resigned from the Earth
And enjoyed a swim along the starry shore.
And it dawned in him, on that milky-white stream:
The copy is the original, the first and the last are same.
The dust that swept the first brush of the paint,
Is present again even if paint and brush change.
So he endeavoured to copy Her work fully,
Until His work and Her work were wily alike.
And by the thousands that came and awed,
Pointing at riveting patches of unknown color,
He simply swore: that His work had no name,
Other than the name of work, which was Her name.
IV.
‘Now begins the fight’, said He,
On the first and last stroke of midnight.
‘Watch out!’, the birds cried—
But unheard it went, and three
In black poppy-clothed dress, sighed
And onward took to the watchtower.
Yet they could not see nor hear much,
And passed their time recounting stories,
And going Dutch on fags like lovers tokens.
Above and beyond them, the earth and sky
Had already taken leave. Nothing there but
Wry and shallow air to breathe.
‘Bring the light!’, said the first,
‘Keep the dark’, urged the second,
The third dared not speak. And so along,
Until even the furthest star had vanished.
Between that merry and unforgiving bleakness,
The poppies sewed on their chest withered.
And when Nothing came, as it is use among them,
The first screamed God! and kneeled;
The second howled Monster! and readied the blade;
While the third chose to believe Nothing had truly came.
They spent like this an eternity or two—
Before you, because you know my name.
And when I come for you, because I will,
Know that I weigh neither glory nor shame.
V.
It looks for me, the undying: it wishes to be part of me.
It speaks, and it sings, and it paints, and it plays,
It craves me to be in.
Its pain and its love crave me to be the pain and the love.
It craves me to be the daylight and the starry night.
My time is its story, my space its music.
It desires not to live forever, it desires not to early die.
It only wishes to be in me, thoroughly, if only.
It craves me to be in.
Like one of these ancient Özgurian songs strung on lute,
It strucks and strides, plucked and drawn to my accord.
It waits not in vain; I, too, shall rise soon.
(From Triptych)