Even Pretty Buddhas' - Han Shan of Old Speaks In a Dream
How strange is life in old age.
Overwrought by too much thinking
all is not yet lost but merely tossed,
scrambled in this ramble where etymology
is everything. And good boots.
I'm to poetry then and books a-sundry,
the old scrolls and tints an attempt to
keep a horizon, above it, not under but
the dip is soon enough. The worms can
correct my spelling and punctuation
when I go beneath the willow tips slowly
teasing the grasses into laughter.
White hair nearer now to Yellow Spring,
my humor with others is still intact.
Even alone I manage to laugh out loud,
a victory over enemies and frivolous,
ill-tempered gods, all my youth wasted
given over to their sly manipulations.
Useless now to demand these years
back but suffice it now to presently
live more boldly, blood hot, with fear
of no god yet with respect for all men
for both good and bad suffer alike.
And I am one to fight with gods, not men
like me longing to roam without explanation,
excuse, without rebuke. After so much divine
frivolity I am an emptied out fool, but a wise
one, I think. I cry out in the night dream
remaindered to Silence. I laugh through tears
avenging daylight from hostile heaven's
envious thieves.
Still, a habit now, I shall sit at the
Buddhas' feet. Their faces are convincing
enough. I shall ignore much evidence to
the contrary. Undergarments, even of
Buddhas, reveal truth which does not flinch
but perhaps may pinch its nose in disgust
even of holy stench.
Even so, in spite of meditations long, I am
flung further into life's fray though I sway
with chants up to the 8 Celestial Flights,
my steps light. Long in exile dizzy with
the Path, human beauty, brokenness there
beside, in all fields shy flowers want
our windows and stoops to proudly present
themselves. This, only now, but happy, do
I discover, and I am old, scents upon the
wind down the human lanes where even dogs
take pleasure from the air, where children
play and narrow water flows petal-by-petal
away; night, day, the joyous moon swoons
in the liquor of splash upon stones happy
to be worn.
There, almost within reach, the blossoming
tree brightens between darker bricks to truly
dwell. It is for me, a shy son of mists, to see,
in spite of big chunks missing, lost, wasted,
torn out. To remake the world as it always
is, celestial, not as it appears to most, but
hard, spirits without shoes still long to be
bread to dwell in our finitude. To them, then,
I am still a daffodil gay, and a rusty gate where
heaven and hell open at the end of the skin road
where vague statues sway out of focus lamenting
their stone, no river to move them, or against,
unable to move at all,
for movement is not nothing.
Nothing to lose, this rag of selves, with
what glory remains of hungry pockets I skip
forward singing, 'La La La, ' a willful don,
a lord of nothing-much, poems a'pocket,
knowing it's all a shell game but I'm clever
having learned something from all the rolled
dice - there is more to here than there.
Wise now, I always bring a change of draws
and a broken piece of mirror to gaze within
practicing my smiles.
If questioned at the Heavenly Gate I'll blame you,
old ghost meandering still, muttering the old hymns,
granting me permission the entrance to boldly storm.
Between what these final breaths remain
and the horizon, my fingers still work
on behalf of all sentient beings; to plead
our case I'll write until the quill is taken
from my death hand which even then shall be
dirty with righteous indigence, only the gods
to blame (they love a good argument anyway) .
Then, only then, will I become human through
and through, be damned and done the mirror and
pockets. A man can curse at the end having
earned the right to do so, then a wink and
a grin rehearsed. Even pretty Buddhas pretending
eternity cannot move by themselves alone,
in need of human feet and arms. In this way
then we become the same as I too will be born
by men to the grave no longer able to move
on my own.
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
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