In Remembrance of Su Shih

 

Lo, poem is a trace of heart,

its beat, and rhyme

that lace the air

into ordered strains.

 

Lo, poem is a trace of heart

that elicits the elusive

beings’ inner patterns.

From time’s locking eclipse.

 

See-through responsiveness

by which the heart and its song

endure, riding on the tranquility

of a lighthearted leaf with a bit of writing.

 

Behold on this note—

Su Shih—born into a common

family from the less educated,

who never ceased to criticize

 

an unjust government

for which he spent most of life

in exile in the provinces

and was nearly executed

 

and whose wife burned

many of his poems on a river boat;

He is the side of the mountain

that welcomes Morning Sun,

 

wandering like water

in between one’s leaves and lives

and their sparkling gleams—

souls’ mirrored, spotted glimpse

 

by ch’an stillness—recluse search—

deities’ canvas—

and its paths and doors and windows,

giving himself to them over—and over.

 

Thus like mellifluous tea when it is poured,

spreading open and pure

both the guest and the host

while a moment and the immortal 

 

come and meet and stay

and like water and its flash

ascending in natural, inherent consent

            in joy to depth and clarity,

 

like morning clouds and mist

rinsed and cleansed

of the acrid and the base:

which poems purify the soul as well?

 

That perennial lay is the parent of mine.

That tranquil lightness of the egret’s flight.

Why, isn’t poetry a timeless trace of heart?

“First across the snow—on a river bridge”?