FROM YU XUANJI
(843-868)
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There is a spunky lady.
Her name is Crazy Wisdom.
She can travel through all the world
on a wild, bone-white horse.
She can fly beyond stars by thought,
or into the core of a tree,
and enter the house of God anywhere.
Ah, sunflowers bloom everywhere!
and here are the little pale blossoms
of the moon.
Look, a round, white cottage.
God the gardener lives here...
Roses hang from under its eaves;
carnations and the lotus intertwine.
In the arbor, amidst sweet grapes,
there is a barrel of good wine.
Hot bread and rice are in one basket
on a table that's bountifully spread.
The silence is startling!
*
A little path leads through the garden
into ancient forest's darkened groves.
The grass here is glassy and luminous.
Deer nuzzle your arms; birds land in your hair;
you scratch the back of a black bear.
Under an apple tree is a pile of small books.
I take one, and sitting on a rock
next to a tinkling stream
sing its poems and sail
in a little green and yellow boat
upon the lake of God's dreams.
The wind carries me here and there
to villages, and flowered fields,
to hermitages and exotic cities,
to desolate deserts in oceans of Light.
Everywhere I arrive is home.


Poem © Blake Steele 1997
Image © Blake Steele 2010