God the Vintner

Wild grape blossoms disperse upon a breeze...
I see through the procession of vines
That the parade of all these vessels
Is empty, completely consumed,
By a celebration of gusts
Trickling inside the belly of the wind,
Scattering confetti upon the wedding feast of
Time and Space

Yes, the air is thoroughly intoxicated again
The galaxies gather 'round to sing
Drinking songs
The sky above is an endless revel
And the stars fill his Lord's drinking bowl,
Pouring out their essence
Proffering this wine to any soul
Who might keep up
Because this drunken universe knows
But an insatiable thirst
And it swiftly empties that bowl
And fills it again

Drinking of Its Self
To the bottom of all phenomena,
Drinking of Its Self
To the bottom of
Thought and substance,
Drinking of Its Self
Into oblivion,
A riot of fruit
Amidst fields forgotten

This universe
Rolls beneath the tables of infinity
The cloth of All dragged down
To cover Its nakedness,
Wandering through the orchards
Of Time and Space
Reeling in the clay
Atop beds of minute grape blossoms

Stars and galaxies
A mist of white inside a dream...


LVX

JAL

Passer-By, These Are Words: Yves Bonnefoy

Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
I want you to listen: to this frail
Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
To fuse into a single heat with that blind
Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
And for you who move away, pensively,
Here becomes there without ceasing to be.

Dayears

Concealed
Before awakening
Seconds, minutes, days, years,
Dayears in a blink of an eye
Seeking to open anew

A place for a dream,
A pillow to display a jewel
Of concealed imagery
Floating on a surface of silk
Feeling
The unveiling
Of beauty
Sealed in power
Of unrevealed knowledge
Encased deep within the soul
Lost in dayears
Of slumber

Seeking to surrender,
To remember
A dream
Fleeing at the opening
Of the eyes
In a blinding flash
Of returning
To a dream

Days
Years,
Dayears later
As it is lived
In the hidden time
Of dayears
Spent dreaming
Until, at last, vaguely
For a moment
You Remember
Where it is
Or maybe never...

LVX
JAL

The Path Leading out of the Heart

I hear so many, so many whispers

In my veins

I hear so many names, so many

At the edge of silence and seas

They circle perfectly

In a dance of blood

Holding hands with the stars,

Ever leaping on

Fluid music, incarnadine, relentless beat!

Cantillations! Cantillations!

Of the invocable, of the unseen

Secret of All

Men’s lives

That is beyond description.

This circle hymning everything

In which the names, the stars

Do not speak, do not say

Only sing

In whispers spinning

In the circle of blood that is

The violet doorway

Through starlight

Leaving themselves behind in whispers

Dancing with the liquid weight

Of names along the dusty path

Of their blood pulsing in the wind,

This soil of absolute mystery

In which I hear my footsteps

Moving of themselves beside theirs

Along the mute, empty paths of my body.

This flowing outline cut by the wind

Against the blackness of space

Bearing only the fallen signposts

Of fallen stars

Leading the way out of the heart

And the names, so many, so many

Stars in the sky, the fruit of wine

Overripe upon the long, dark vines of night

Plunging down their own secret route

Through veins

To the final ground of blood

Breaking apart atop the empty source

Seeding its own end

Upon the gnarled, ancient roots of the universe

Feeding the soil of all names

That have wed the earth

That have known the long path

Leading out of the heart

That have known the vow of

I do.

The vow of I Am.

The vow of I Will Be

Undone, finished, undone, never finished

Merely undressed, naked, divest

Like a lover’s dress tossed upon the limbs

Of the universe

In a midnight rendezvous

The faint rustling of a dress in the breeze

The faint, unmistakable rustlings of lovers

In the leaves, in the stars and vines

The faint, unmistakable rustlings

Of blood, of names

Straining to communicate, to reach out

To be known, but unable to speak

Unable to say who they are in the darkness,

In the darkness

In which lover’s lose their names

Upon this path leading out of the heart

I see in the darkness

I must travel light

I must travel more light

I see in the darkness

That if I am to go beyond here

I must travel light, and dance upon it.

I must leave my name behind

I must leave it behind

In a whisper

Which I sing.

LVX

JAL

A Drop from a Fountain, a Waft from a Fan.

Listen: “Good bye.”
These words always deep
Within the air

The wings of a passing butterfly -
Bright sails fading away over a horizon
Surging into the ocean of sky...

All these drops from a fountain
Fanning through the air
To answer for themselves
Their own mysterious question.
Don’t ask,
Listen: “Good bye”

Wings and sails
Are ultimately beyond ken…
Beyond doing…
Almost hallucinatory
Flashes scattering into the white sprays of sun:
A foam of brocaded wings
A jet of crystalline sails
The sweep of a fan
Reaching everywhere
In the Permanence of Wind

All Thus Come…

Filled with tremendous greeting -
Splashing over with endless gratitude at leaving
And leaping into the air with
A brief, but forceful waving
Good bye.

And more than a thousand years ago in China
A young student asked,
"What is one drop
From the fountain
At the Master Hui Neng's temple
Like…?"

One wonders how long he remained
When told by an elder
Who had been there
That it was just like…
One drop
From the fountain
At the Master’s temple.

Repeatedly the solution
Of a question such as this
Flows directly from within
The question itself,
But words bind the way.
How deaf and blind we become
From our own rhetoric.

When will all the rhetorical questions
End?

Yet, we want so badly to understand
What just one drop
From the source
Is really like
While all the fleeting time, it’s here.
Always like nothing else
Only thus come,
Fountaining with suchness
Deep within the air.

Listen: “Good bye”.
The ancient masters
Urge us to leave ourselves behind.
Each of their words is
But One drop from the fountain,
Fanning through the air:

A long stretching path
Leading invisibly back into form
On a ray of light down a transparent river
Circulating through the formlessness of sky
Into one drop
From the temple fountain.

The silent event of an answer
That is just as
The fanning of one’s self
To acknowledge a question respecting
The Permanent Nature of Wind,
And how it is that it reaches Everywhere.

As the Master remained silent
Wafting the air about him,
Insousciant as a butterfly,
The student simply bowed and departed,
Not uttering a sound.
“Thank you”
Was already very deep within the air.

JAL

This Time Is Mine. Michael McCulloh

The time is mine

I am of normal night

There are many heads

Wrenched upwards

From the tidal swarm

In the antipodes

But no man who dies here

Is buried

In his opposite yearning

Thin ground that blends feet to dust

Here is a placid library

Only stacked with the written rock

Some horde must steal the ship now

And sail out over what is written

Steal all heads stiffening upward

Riding on this… rodeo hide

I’ve never been sold

To the bragging operas

I tear only tunes from any score

Believing song a vice, a tornado

I’ll bring a dance storm for the dead, now

Who must strangle rocks even

To own their broken fingers

We’ll go marching rightside up

Against the opposite tide

Here’s the white bicycle

Where a man fell down, unfortunate

He was not buried there

A mere insomniac

On his own block

He follows me, sleeping now

While I drag his loud forest scream

At the crossing of wide streets

Here many drunks fell silent

Lamenting as I do, of burial and upward air

Struck by sudden impulses, I’d think

They decided then for themselves

And march, if they please, very loudly

While I tune up the edges of our own private tide

All these deaths written

Are so easy to ride on, their memories…

They toss me forward in pure folly

And I shock them beyond burial

As always toward Antipodes:

“I will untrace

What you are written

I’ve come to sow you

As forgotten”

Windows slammed then

And shutters too

And my written trade

Became too rough for wrangling

The winds that sting sideways:

Blood had swarmed here wrong

Stumbled neither toward me

Nor lively death

I could not read this sidewalk

Nor sing the dance of onetime

Toward the brutal broken truth

I lure only the dead from cities

But I know not the living spell

To break those shuttered windows

Rats, I believe, someone, who charmed from there

And children too, according to good legend

Was never paid in gold, but took his own…

I wish to peer inside those faces

That drop their terrible fear

On sidewalks the dead must leave

I am only caretaker

Of the Antipodes

Wrenching heads upward

From its opposite tide

To trance their spirits

Downward toward good ground

Still I wish to peer

Inside the sound of slamming

Shutters, do you sense

What happened there?

Those seamless whispers cause

My robes to crumble…

I am a legend too, no ghost

And remember nothing of my birth

But it was some shuttering window

That crumbled me to this:

Sweeper only of memories

Herding always the glad willing

From such places cursed by living hearts.

Kkachi

Kkachi
Omen of good luck, harbinger of guests
The Koreans said.
Kkachi
Bird of fables, trickster, figure of the oppressed.
Kkachi
“Springtime of our hope”, the children sang.
Kkachi
Clever survivor inside the concrete forest.
Kkachi
A place in nature for you best,
Your nest upon the tallest tree of every hill.

Kkachi,
Royal blue wings, clean white breast
Kkachi
Tail feathers nearly a foot long

Kkachi
Was your Name,
Your only Name.
Kkachi,
Was like no bird I had ever seen.

With infinite seriousness it flew
Sincerity the substance of its wings
Carried between Heaven and Earth
By the Sons and Daughters of the Elements
Lifted in the Emptiness of its progress
Upon unmoving wings
Its destination already perfectly Accomplished.

Flying across the fields, then gone…
Yet the image of this bird was creased in my mind.
Its flight an utter epiphany

As if nothing had ever moved
As if nothing had ever occurred
As if nothing had ever arisen

But had always been there
Because it had always been here now
Within this field so subtle
That it cannot perceive itself

Within my mind
Without words to describe
What I had just seen,
Everything so wondrously Nameless.

And I asked beautiful Hyun Yoon that day
What was this bird I had just seen.
I could only draw a foolish picture on a scrap of paper
That did little to convey the wonder
I had felt at seeing this prodigy
That had blessed the rice fields like
A Buddhist priest
And rose above the pines,
Its tail feathers trailing long robes
Across the temple floors of sky.
A headcrest like a bonze’s cap
And a song in its throat
Like a small bell with a broken clapper
Like one used in a meditation hall
To end a session.

And full of charm she informed me:

“Oh, yes, that’s Kkachi.”
I still didn’t understand.
What was the name of this bird in English
That had translated me into the Nameless?
And the dictionary said,
Magpie. Nothing more or else.

But Kkachi,
Not Korean magpie
Is its only name

And I realized that there were endless names
Throughout human languages
For the same things, often just bare equivalencies.
Yet throughout this huge world
Each land held unique treasures
That only were seen in that land, only were known
In that country’s language,
Everything else only
Mere approximation.

And I knew
That all Dharmas,
All things, are but temporary
Names taking place in the void
And not real.
Only brief addresses
To aid us on our journey through
The Unknowable.
And I realized then...

JAL