Snow Moon Flower

In this place of rice fields,

metrical mountains and little bubbling canals,

it was not the self against time

or the self blurred by flesh, it was the self

living without any palpable design.

Common egrets floated on broad bowed wings.

A rooster crowed at dawn and the body --

graceful, alert -- slanted gently toward the sun.

In the night gloom, a ground spider jumped

around the shortwave radio

on which a samisen played,

and fawnlike creatures ventured out of the pines,

observing in my windows a solitude

as pure as a bowl of milk.

But outside the gate of this place,

there was another mirror world,

connected only by a dark path of sticky stones,

where there were goat smells and little cries,

hooves pawing and flying beetles. No man could resist it.

No man could endure it. The long shadows

fell on the mind like nails in a plank,

taking one beyond the surface of things,

into the deepest places, not of man’s griefs

but of man’s truths, which cut deep,

if they did not tear us apart, like a field of thorn,

as the dark tops of the trees shone complacently

and a changing light filtered and breathed

against the lonely surface of everything.