Poems & poem-like things – Page 1152

May 19, 2005February 18, 2013 by Dave Bonta

In the temple of the Orchid Fragrance Goddess

by Li He
(791-817)

Year after year, the ageless spring returns: an indolent green swaying amid warm mist. The scent of pine mingles with the fragrance of evening flowers as the sun drops low among the willows on the riverbank, turning sand and cobbles a vivid red. Watercress crowds a spring among the rocks; in the bamboo grove, a dusting of fresh sprouts. Blue ridges arch like eyebrows above the gates – eyelids the color of dawn. Orchid bent like a bow under the weight of dew, like the loveliest of mountains, weeping in the vast spring sky.

The dancer’s girdle pendants were stolen from a phoenix wing. Her trailing sashes shimmer with veins of silver. Orchid and cassia exhale a fragrant incense; lotus and water caltrop serve for the piled offerings. Out viewing the rain, she meets the Jade Princess; returning in her skiff, she encounters the River Goddess. High on beer she plays her flute, tying a rakish scarf around her golden-threaded skirt.

She streaks across the sky – the bell-like call of a white stag; weaves through the water – a slap of shining scales. Her coiled hair seems poised for flight. Cheeks glow with a blend of every blossom’s hue. Spiraling locks frame her dimples, and dark brows mirror perfect lips. Light and airy as a butterfly on the wing, her insubstantial body makes even wind and sun feel shy.

Neglected in her chamber, the incense burner grows cold, and the phoenix frozen in her mirror gathers dust. On feet of fog, riding the wind she returns: a shake of jade pennants heard faintly on the highest peaks.

__________

This translation is of course dedicated to frequent Via Negativa commenter the Sylph. The photos are of pink lady’s-slipper, an orchid that grows in profusion here on Brush Mountain. As for fragrance, our wild azalea is second to none.

May 19, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 98

This entry is part 97 of 119 in the series Cibola

Shiwanna/Esteban (cont’d)

What’s life worth
without such visions?
Be it the full three
score & ten, or cut
however short–as long
as there’s one, continual encountering . . .

It made my head hurt
when I read William
of Ockham–sanest
of mad Franciscans–outline
the blind alleys
down which a mind
can lead the soul
possessed
by abstraction.
Though he missed everything, of course . . .

Who will miss me—
even notice
my absence? Who,
if they kill Marcos, will believe
these Indians?
My name–who will say it?
My work–how to keep it up
with the gourd gone
& almost all my faith
scattered along the way?

The friar would tell me
to pray: I believe.
Help Thou my unbelief.
Circular reasoning, sure,
the classic type.
But what the hell
did Aristotle know?
Or Seneca?
Or Pliny?
The high priests of Reason,
bloodless,
ignorant of all beyond their borders,
equating their backwater sea
with the great Ocean.

What did I know? These Seven
Cities are a joke: seven dusty towns,
seven confections of mud.
As crowded with busy little souls
as termite mounds.

Or are there in fact
only six, as some
of my guides kept saying?
Perhaps the seventh is just
a place for ceremony,
a capital where no one’s allowed
to spend the night. Or else
they have a different accounting,
refuse to let the whole dissolve
into enumerated parts.
Or simply equivocate . . .

May 18, 2005June 21, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Drinking alone beneath the moon

by Li Bai
(a.k.a. Li Po, 701-762)

Yi hu jiu

In the middle of the flowering grove, one jug of beer.
Drinking alone – no friends or family near –
I raise my cup, invite the moon to join me.
Counting my shadow, we’re a party of three.

But moon’s a lightweight, doesn’t know how to drink,
And shadow simply matches me cup for cup.
For now, though, they’ll do just fine, I think.
Spring is here, my friends! Let’s live it up.

I start to sing; the moon sways to and fro.
I get up and dance – shadow reels in disarray.
Sober, we crave the company of some jolly fellow;
Drunk, each goes his separate way.

Freed of all ties, yet bound forever more,
Let’s get back together on the galaxy’s far shore.

Come April, and the village of Xianyang lies deep in fallen blossoms. Who can bear to be alone with sorrow in the spring? Who can gaze on such sights as these and stay sober? The unseen Maker rolls his dice: for you, wealth and a long life; poverty for you, and a life cut short. But one mug of beer can balance life and death, even out a thousand things that confound the intellect. Drunk, I lose track of heaven and earth, sitting alone on my mat, unmoving, unmovable. I end by forgetting that I ever existed at all: pure joy, then, for the no-one left behind!

If Heaven above be not besotted with beer,
why should a Beer Star appear in heaven?

If Earth, too, be not a tippler,
why do we find a Beer Springs on earth?

With beer thus beloved above and below,
drinking beer can hardly be against nature.

I’ve heard a clear brew likened to a sage,
while the slang term for a cloudy beer is saint.

Since I’ve drunk deep of saints and sages,
what need have I to search for spirit guides?

Three cups, and the Great Way lies open;
a gallon, and everything resolves into Suchness.

Simply strive for beer and find contentment.
Don’t speak of these arcana to the sober ones.
_________

This translates three of the four sections of the original poem. The first section best imitates the rhyme and meter of the original.

“Sage” and “Saint” were code words for strained and unstrained beer during a period of prohibition in the early Tang Dynasty.

For other translations of ancient Chinese beer-drinking poems at Via Negativa, see The guest (Du Fu) and Night drinking at the western pavilion of the Flower of the Dharma Temple (Liu Zongyuan).

May 18, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 97

This entry is part 96 of 119 in the series Cibola

Shiwanna/Esteban (cont’d)

Don’t believe it.
Neither what you hear in Cíbola
nor the missed footfalls
of your jackrabbit
heart. Think
like a jackal thinks. Act
like a blacksmith: no
unnecessary blows. Remember
your unknown father
in whatever sort of heaven he may
still find good hunting.

They broke
the gourd: good riddance.
They stripped me
of amulets, bells & feathers,
tobacco pouch, even
the Holy Child
of Atocha: fine.
Maybe they’ll learn something.

From this cell I can hear
what goes on,
how they rush, argue,
fight among themselves.
Tonight I have nothing
but tomorrow I’ll make
their walls my armor–
you’ll see. They need
rain? I’ll bring it.
They’ll need protection
from Cortez,
from Coronado; I’ll be
their shield . . .

They have me figured
for a corpse. Well,
nothing cures whatever ails
like death. Old Bones,
you know what Hippocrates says:
we’re each sworn to guard
the other’s secrets,
yes? But in any case
you’re way too pale
for this climate.
That friar with
his shaved head sure ought
to earn a halo
from this, if only
to keep off the sun . . .

A good man, I admit. The rare
honest brownrobe, sure
of nothing but
God’s mercy. For that
I envy him. Still,
give me the license to think
my own, my will-
ful thoughts:
give me the desert
no one else wants, the shape-
shifting sands, the thorn-
scrub to explore
in an ever-diminishing circuit.
To chart, to map
in ever-growing detail,
right up to the smallest
spider mite,
a red mote in some vagrant angel’s eye.

May 17, 2005September 9, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 96

This entry is part 95 of 119 in the series Cibola

Shiwanna/Esteban

The playing board retracts
its four scaly feet,
its tail,
its wizened head.
The players face each other
across the circle:
the red-painted gambler sits in the east,
the black-painted gambler in the west.

Each blows on his fingers,
whispers into his fists.

They toss the two-
sided sticks: red
& red
& red.
Red’s opponent feels the sticks turning
in his hands even before the cast.
Red & red again.

Now deep in the red, Black forfeits
more than his shirt. More.
More.

Stripped of rattles & feathers,
all his fetishes in
a muttering pile behind
his opponent’s back,
with his freedom now at stake,
what else can he put up?
No wife, no children–
I am all
I have left.

He removes his left arm
& sets it down by the pile.
Tosses the sticks:
red side up.
Removes his left leg. Red.
Right leg. Red.
Right arm. Red. Take off
your head. Red,
red: your ribs,
your vital organs . . .
__________

For more on the symbolism of black and red, see the notes to Cibola 52.

May 16, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 95

This entry is part 94 of 119 in the series Cibola

Reader (15)

Now let us return to our beautiful and delightful castle and see how we can enter it. . . . But you must understand that there are many ways of “being” in a place. Many souls remain in the outer court of the castle, which is the place occupied by the guards; they . . . have no idea what there is in that wonderful place, or who dwells in it . . .
SAINT TERESA OF AVILA
Interior Castle

Ah! The omen for staying here is not easy on things with souls.
A slave passes a late evening;
A slave doesn’t stay long among you.
He has become the jujube, one long mound of dirt.
Jujubes have become the hero’s portal.
The tree of life has become the covering for his nakedness.
SEYDOU CAMARA
Kambili (translated by Charles S. Bird et. al.)

May 12, 2005May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

The guest

by Du Fu
(712-770)

It’s spring, so the water’s high
on both sides of my house.
Watch your step.
I’m used to greeting seagulls –
whole flocks of them, every day!
Please excuse the fallen blossoms.
With no other visitors,
I haven’t swept the walk.
You’re the very first guest
to enter by the wicker gate.

Living so far from the market,
our meals are plain – no
fancy dishes. And poor
as we are, our beer’s
a little stale. But
we can invite my old neighbor
to drink with us, if you’re willing.
I’ll give a holler over the fence:
“Come help us finish off
the rest of this beer!”
__________

This translation is dedicated to my friend Chris.

Beer: The Chinese word jiu refers to alcohol in any form. Since most undistilled fermented beverages in East Asia come from grains rather than fruit, it seems more accurate to refer to them as beer rather than wine.

May 12, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 94

This entry is part 93 of 119 in the series Cibola

Marcos (5) (conclusion)

He glances again toward the people
& sees how some of the women
look appraisingly toward those plants
he’d thought were weeds
growing randomly through
the piled rocks–which, he realizes,
follow the contour as regularly
as terraces. Wipe out
any infertility from this land
filling the hungry with
an abundance of good things
so that the poor & needy may praise
Your wondrous name forever
world without end. (Amen.)

The Indian Marcos passes him
the calabash filled with holy water
& he sprinkles it where the elders indicate,
pursing their lips toward the stone
nurseries with their odd crops
which he recognizes now as some relative
of the maguey plant,
leathery green clusters
of upthrust spears. Then
before continuing the procession

they erect an extra, larger cross–
the one Esteban had sent back
with a message to hurry,
the mission fields were ripe–
& since the ground’s too hard
to dig, they pile up stones
pirated from the fields
to form a miniature Golgotha.
Holy Cross, which art the divine
gateway to Heaven, Altar
of the singular essential
sacrifice of the body
& blood of the Son of God,
open for us a safe & peaceful road
for their conversion & for our conversion.
Give our king peaceful possession
of these kingdoms & provinces
for his most sacred glory.

Another holy song,
the interpreter whispers.
He uses still the priestly language,
but we understand that this
is the most important blessing of all
upon the land. The headman
shifts the rogational cross
to his left shoulder. If I have to keep
my face solemn like this
for very much longer, he mutters
to the man beside him, I swear
it’ll turn to wood. Who ever heard
of a god served in sorrow?

But at a signal from the friar he resumes
his stately walk, leading the people
to the next point in the circuit
where long ago First Woman
stippled the soft wet ground
with her planting stick.

__________

Holy Cross . . . glory. I took this formula for the Act of Possession from a quote attributed to the notary and secretary of Juan de Oñate, when he “took possession of all the kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico” in 1598. It actually constitutes a tiny subsection of a very lengthy legal and religious discourse delivered by Oñate on the spot. To read such speeches in close conjunction with translations of Native oratory is to be struck anew by the gulf between the two civilizations.

It was recorded by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, a lieutenant under Oñate and subsequent author of Historia de la Nueva México. This work, recently reissued in a bilingual edition by the University of New Mexico Press, is actually an epic poem–one of many 16th- and 17th-century New World epics written by Iberians heavily under the spell of Virgil. It’s unique for its length, for the interminability of its sentences, and for its composition in blank verse rather than rhymed meter. The central drama in the book is the “revolt” (more accurately, resistance) of Acoma Pueblo, just east of Zuni/Shiwanna, ending in a Spanish victory complete with cameos by the Virgin and St. James the Moorkiller.

May 11, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 93

This entry is part 92 of 119 in the series Cibola

Marcos (5) (cont’d)

The procession winds through the fields–
or are they gardens? Indian plantings
always remind him of the dooryard
gardens back home
in Provence, that same
commingling of tame & wild,
the artful confusions of herb
& tree & vine. He wonders if here,
too, they have cunning-men
& neighbor ladies gifted in
the knowledge of signatures,
God’s gossip with weeds.

But as they climb the dry slopes
beyond the reach of the last
irrigation ditch, they pass windrows
of rock piles like one would expect
at the edges of plowed fields–except
there’s very little growing between them
in the sun-baked clay, only
the hardiest thorn bush & creosote
& the annual evidence of springs unseen
already yellowed, powdering
under their sandals.

The cross stops before a large pit
black with charcoal
& Marcos finds himself in the middle
of the rogational psalm: My prayer
is unto thee Oh Lord
in an acceptable time
Oh God in the multitude
of thy mercy hear me,
in the truth of salvation.
Deliver me out of the mire,
don’t let me sink–from those
who hate me, out of the deep
waters–don’t let the flood
wash over me nor
the deep swallow me up.
Let not the pit–he startles
at the aptness of it–
let not the pit close
her mouth around me. . . .
For the Lord hears the poor, his captives
he never scorns. Let the heaven
& earth praise him, the seas
& everything that moves.
For God will save Zion & rebuild
the cities of Judah . . .

Then the antiphon with the other Marcos,
who gazes impassively toward the north,
the wine-dark horizon:
Bless these fields. (We beg you to hear us.)
Bless these hills & mountains,
consecrate every wild tree & bush
from which these your servants
gather sustenance (We beg you to hear us).
And all else besides, he murmurs: best
to cast the net widely, or not at all.

May 10, 2005 by Dave Bonta

Cibola 92

This entry is part 91 of 119 in the series Cibola

Marcos (5) (cont’d)

Marcos rises renewed, seized
with fresh intent: later
this very morning–since
he’d already planned, with the help
of his three assistants, to honor
their hosts’ request for holy songs–
to bless the fields and wild crops
in solemn procession.
To improvise
a penitential rogation. It’s only
a few days past the official date:
his name-saint’s day,
the Feast of St. Mark.

Thus it happens that four hours after sunrise
on their fourth morning in the valley
they kneel before the makeshift altar,
the natives wearing (as instructed)
no jewelry & only their plainest
cotton robes, as well as the sad looks
this rite demands.
The friar launches into the litany:
God the Father of Heaven have mercy
God the Son Redeemer of the world have mercy
God the Holy Spirit have mercy
Holy Trinity One God have mercy on us
Holy Mary pray for us
& at a signal from the Indian Marcos
all rise, queue up by twos
behind the cross, carried by a newly
baptized elder: first the men,
then the women, & bringing
up the rear the four religious,
Marcos as always finding the sacred
phrases right at hand, inevitable
as wave following ocean wave–
Holy Mother of God pray for us
Holy Virgin of Virgins pray for us
his inner senses freed for contemplation.

He marvels at the silence–no
suppressed giggles, not even a whisper–
& finds himself stealing glances
at this congregation–if such
it can be called–of freshly
baptized infidels. One woman
he notices with hair modestly
unbound, spilling down her back
& around her bowed head–such
humility in her posture,
her chaste attire,
St. Benedict pray for us
St. Bernard pray for us
St. Dominic pray for us
St. Francis pray for us,
he allows himself to imagine
a future for her in Service,
as a Bride of Christ–
all ye holy priests & Levites pray for us
all ye holy monks & hermits pray for us
St. Mary Magdalene pray for us
St. Agatha pray for us
St. Lucy pray for us
St. Agnes pray for us
St. Cecilia pray for us,
perhaps even a founder, Lord willing,
of the first chapter of Poor Clares
north of New Spain. As soon
as the word arrives from Rome, per
his request, for full native
admission to the orders . . .
All ye virgins & widows pray for us
be merciful, spare us O Lord
be merciful, graciously hear us O Lord
from all evil O Lord deliver us
from all sin O Lord deliver us
from thy wrath O Lord deliver us
from a sudden & unprovided death
O Lord deliver us . . .
__________

rogation – Rogation days were “Days of prayer, and formerly also of fasting, instituted by the Church to appease God’s anger at man’s transgressions, to ask protection in calamities, and to obtain a good and bountiful harvest,” according to the online Catholic Encyclopedia. “The Major Rogation [on April 25], which has no connexion with the feast of St. Mark (fixed for this date much later) seems to be of very early date and to have been introduced to counteract the ancient Robigalia, on which the heathens held processions and supplications to their gods. St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) regulated the already existing custom.”