Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Thinking of Su Shi, Nie Shenqionq, and the Girl Who Took the Cup


The coming rain
has put me down
like those who

used to repair to temples
so that they may grow overnight
their soul a new young ear

that lets one hear
even not much of a whisper
from the inside, of the unseen.

***

Chinese poets of old
would leave.
A mark, a trace

that’s trailing,
one that nips
and nabs

and taps and dips
and fills and ripples
like simple hollow

wetland reeds
as they sound
and trail and stalk

a passing water breeze,
rendering you inside
a landscape of a soul

that does permeate this all
and which invariably
like a Zhu Shuzhen

comes to us with turns
or words—no man
could reach alone.

In the golden nick
of a single momement
which sliced through time

and that awakens
because it reveals
where souls and eyes

have once more met,
where they are meant
to meet and where

they are bound.
And that move
and moment

that pours
its discreet tone
into the writ

otherwise impalpable
like the breath
which the air keeps

then finds in us
its waiting well
or pot of ink—

just as a pen
of feather would
have drawn

out a gift of knowing
with a song, a wing,
across the scroll

in waves now flowing.
Both immortal and mortal,
both enliving and living—

as one in whom God
and one’s soul may
glide in glance

and meet and match
sheer, intimate and open
like a soul in love,

in line and in content,
both sung and noted,
immortal and mortal—

Before the moment
doesn’t dissipate
like a fleeting reverie

which a risen wind
would easily unknot.
Except for the trail,

a poet’s footprints,
which your distance
might have thinned,

or as you come to wake up,
the line gets shattered, broken,
by someone’s word of prose.

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