As if some palm unseen,
ever pressed from the sky,
made those tallest pines
meet one ordained height
which the scaly boughs
could not pass
so they gnarl and bow
as they twine and wind
the scorching sun,
and yet so even—
and thus they graze and rub
and scent egret plumes and wings
that bring them regal white
with silence braided into breeze.
Once upon a Sunday
with the air dripping wet,
a girl in denim blue
came and sat
below crowns of pines—
far from weak and weary,
far from forgotten,
and started to tap the guitar—
its body, rosette, even bout:
“Only this and nothing more,”
with August waiting by the door.
But no bars to borrow
from those who listened
still in their small oubliette,
each separate, dying to her words,
although vainly but not in vain
still on selling to all those buying
their extra prison’s rods.
Thus there she came and sat down
with her expert silken palms
made to squeeze and fret
her guitar’s pegs and nuts,
glissando with fingers
on a rapid slide
now she dressed
and undid again
with sound and tremor
the guitar’s rendered neck,
to entreat an entrance
rumored to be no more
except for times’ darkness,
cloven with its telltale horns:
Is that how souls grow stronger
where they disappear?
But anyway, that’s how the neck,
the strings, the bridge, the waist,
became roused, forgone, taken,
and her fingers necklaced all,
inlaying them with beats and rimes:
thus and way much more
when the day was old
and the night still young.
A lady with a husky voice
to a mute and hollow Lord,
way too late to doubt
any of those flowing notes.
And I would think and bat
that no one since the Moors
has ever brought one’s lover back
across from the ocean to this shore
as she did it with chords then
and with such an adroit spank,
and so often trained,
where the guitar rounds
its polished end
while her hair laid
in raven black
found its lift
with each of the heels’ new rap.
Was it an angel—someone fallen—
wide-eyed by her smile
and combed, recumbent
on her fingers’, feathers’ blade,
brought down, summoned
to her Bacchic song.
—Music requires one to remain where the sound actually is.
1. “Motion Is Everything; and the Goal Is Nothing.”
A modern city is an interesting place:
so many always need
to be somewhere else
than where they are.
With few moments of rest
between, even when they die
they repeat
the self-same line.
For someone said
what we do in life
is practice
for death—
and for them it is like
the good Czech joke:
“According to this map,
we are now on that other hill”—
or perhaps someone else’s hill,
someone else’s death.
2. Why Is It So Hard to Love What Is Real
And So Easy to Love What Is False?
That constant swap and swirl—
doesn’t it keep everything
stunningly efficient, alive,
while what truly is
never means as much?
But if life is unaware drill for death,
why do the obstinate
spend what time they can on music?
To catch the false note?
Then I remember: a girlfriend,
then a wife, then an ex of my friend,
wanted to tell me, aglow,
how she came to love the tang of the false
as her newly found decadent délicatesse.
I cannot but admire
that patience and that eye
caring and knowing
how to treat a roll of silk
where mulberry bloom,
smoothly spun, become
what a woman wears on her skin,
one that slows down
fleeting radiance of light
to a brush of painting touch.
O how I cannot but admire
that patience and that eye
that bring such spangled silk
to the brink where poems breathe.
Student: Who am I? I am bones, skin, and blood.
Where do I go from there? Perhaps to this:
to become one with eating. … But to be honest,
I have no burning desire for kenshō—
for seeing (見) "nature" or "essence."
I get easily tired — the Way is terribly long.
—Roshi Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen
Whence do the roots of false views come?
Those that gnaw and feed
on what always knows within?
Oh, what is one's own
when one dies,
and what is the truth?
Is it like a body one thinks one controls,
one's exclusive claim,
a property with sequestered access?
Why, can't you hear how the gods laugh
just now?
Just think how much emptiness
one has to stir, build, inflate
to keep the truth away, at bay,
to let what is false and wrong stay,
be one's familiar company
whether in life or death.
