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| 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 |  |
18
Let us praise our earth,
let us give praise to the moon on the water,
that which is with no one and with everyone,
everywhere and nowhere –
the size of a swallow’s eye
of a crumb of dry bread,
of a ladder on a butterfly’s wings,
of a ladder thrown down from the sky –
not only disaster and pity,
the bridle of my heart:
but because the wonderful
water smiled.
Let us praise the bathing
of priceless dark branches
in the living panes of glass
and all the sleepless spirits
in every seed of the earth
and that rewards exist
that ward off evil
and that the glory of the earth
is like the gardener and the garden.
Richard McKane
***
18
Let us praise our earthly sphere,
the moon on the water,
and that which is with none and all
here and not here –
the size of a swallow’s eye
of a crumb of dry bread
of a ladder on a butterfly’s wings,
of a ladder thrown down from heaven.
My heart is bridled
not just by woe and by pity
but also by the miraculous water’s smile.
Let us praise the swimming of dark
precious branches in living glass,
and, above each grain in the earth,
the sleepless souls of all who have passed,
and the fact there are rewards,
that we can ward off evil
that there is praise in the world,
like a gardener in a garden.
Andrew Wachtel | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | 18. Let us praise our earth... |
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