Before my mother made jam
she would take a strawberry,
place it between her lips,
kiss me gently,
and bite through the fruit,
leaving half in her mouth
and half in mine.
After that the other strawberries
would be measured precisely
with brass weights and sugar.
I thought jam-making
was balance and skill
and level-headed recipe;
now I know it as
harmony and love
and overflowing spoonfuls.
Confucius: He has not lived in vain
who dies the day he is told about the Way.
Lao Tzu: Highest good is like water.
Warrior,
sigh your consciousness
of war into my green banks:
I will raise your head to catch the song.
Tell me
why you blubber
for the clash of bright swords;
discipline: the growing stain of
life.
You mock the glistening of eyes that brought
me here; the scarlet banners, silver bells
and poems of piety. This slaughter tells
you otherwise. Yet noble deeds are taught
to men, and moral justice must be sought;
though hundreds soak their blood into these dells.
I did not come imbibed on ancient spells
of vengeance; drunk though others may have fought.
You mock my blood, my venerated blood,
the sauce of learning thickened with respect -
supped from duty's cup. You question honour,
rich with peasants' droppings and temple mud,
colourless in peace? Foe of intellect
and order, lover of the tiger's purr!
Broken child,
the way of water
is the way of stringless kites:
no drawing limits, no loosening frees.
Merit
and mystery
are one within its depths.
Shake Master's tree and Lao-blossoms
fall.
A stream that finds its meaning in its flow?
Is life not more than this? Is action vain?
Be still, dead warrior. The morning birds
will nestle in your hair till evenings slow,
and we are one great swell of monsoon rain.
Earth Voices
Sea
Wider than any arms
that can console me
you stretch bodilessly
from one end of
my eyes to the other.
Your rage calms mine,
cartwheeling gulper of air;
midwife to my melancholy,
drowner of my tears.
Hills
Go to the foot-hills my guide says,
to the sleeping green anatomy
of giants, the languorous lines
of giantesses slumbering through time.
I wait, in the youngest hope
that the hills will find their feet,
and wilfully wander back home
with my pebble of a hand in theirs.
Woods
I narrow myself to such smallness
that I become a hopping child-flea
darting like light through the leafy hairs
of the forest's dappled skin.
Tucked into trembles of roots
I listen to the breathing pores
and inhale shadow and sun.
I am a pest of wonder.
