| The Chinese Travelogue | (1986)
If you could dull its perspicuity, free it from chaos, limit its gleam,
liken it to a grain of dust, then it would seem to exist clearly.
| | Lao-Tse |  |
11
With tenderness and depth –
for only tenderness is deep,
only depth possesses tenderness –
I recognise in a thousand faces
who has seen it,
whom it has looked at,
the tender depth
and the deep tenderness
that gazes out from stones as out of glass.
So let the warm lamp of the west
give light,
and the street lamp, the moth trap.
Talk to our homely light,
sun of tenderness and depth
sun deserting the earth
the first and the last sun.
Richard McKane
***
11
With tenderness and depth –
since only tenderness is deep,
and only depth possesses tenderness –
out of a thousand faces I’d know;
whoever has seen it, on whomever it has glanced
from stone things as if from glass,
tender depth and deep tenderness.
So light up,
warm lantern of a west,
lamp, moth trap.
Speak once more
with our everyday light
sun of tenderness and of depth,
sun which is quitting the earth,
first and final sun.
Andrew Wachtel | |
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