The verandah

The verandah

This is where you sit
to hear the crickets
zipping up their jackets,
while the heavy satin
feathers of the owl unravel
overhead,within
the darkened polished halls
of ash and pine and poplar,
where you wait
to hear the water sip
the marble smoothness of the boat
in rhythm, and the
water creatures come
to worship at the shrine
of tangled roots
and leave their mark
along the steady purity of bark.
This is where you sit
to hear the loon
raise up her song
and if there is a moon
to dream, to let your thought break
on the silent surface of the lake.

Billy Collins:

Billy Collins:

On Turning Ten



The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.




-from Sailing Alone Around the Room. New York: Random House, 2001.

Cracks

Cracks

Walk some way into the terrain of the morning
and you’ve already discovered the cracks,
the wedges in the perfect establishment of stone
you’d built up with confessional prayers.

Is it that God is not strong enough
or that your drive to sin wipes out your cleanliness?
You brandished your faith without hesitation,
and with it you damaged the road,

and soon you’ll abandon that path altogether.
What is it in His grace that saves you
when you pass it in your haste to leave?
To you it’s a road-sign, read and forgotten.

Is it that God is not strong enough
or that He turns over your wish for ease
and breaks up the path with His fingers,
and waits for you to fall? –If He is there at all.

You may have constructed this path yourself
with your richly imagined creed,
and your ripened piety is the key for your entry,
and His mercy the reason you never succeed.

The Lotus Lantern: part 3: "A Righteous Anger"

The Lotus Lantern: part 3: "A Righteous Anger"

I have never understood the attraction some gods and goddesses find to mortals. Mortals, with their small minds and their faulty devotion, their weaknesses. Long have I been of the opinion that humans and the Divine must not mix, lest our holiness become weakened too, the wine of our blood thinned by the water of theirs. But I am a kind god: mortals have nothing to fear from me. I send rain, I send crops, I empower earthly armies with might when they are setting out on missions I approve. I am good.

My anger, when they told me of my sister San Shengmu’s marriage to a mortal, of the birth of her mortal child, was good, too: a holy, clean, righteous anger.

I shouted my attendants away and then spoke to my silver servant Dog, letting the might in my voice frighten him into absolute stillness at my feet.

–She is bringing dishonour on our holiness! She has no business living with a mortal, much less bearing his weak children!

And then I rushed out from the Heavenly Hall where I had been reclining, flooded out on a cloud, making it boil and rumble under me, red with my displeasure. I halted my anger outside San Shengmu’s Temple and let my voice break the stillness with a blast.

- Goddess San Shengmu! You have dishonoured us, dishonoured me! Leave your Temple and give me the child and return to the Heavenly Hall!

My voice crackled in the air and hot angry tears exploded from the cloud beneath me; I sent a mighty wind sweeping through the entrance of San Shengmu’s Temple, blowing the terrified pilgrims out of it and off the mountain.

And then she was there, Goddess San Shengmu, bright as lightning, the Lotus Lantern high in her hand, a small white bundle in the other.

-Come to rest! she ordered the people flying off in the wind, and they came softly, befuddled, to rest on the mountainside.

-Divine Erlang, I have chosen what I have chosen, and it is no business of yours, she said to me, the Lantern sparkling dangerously.

I summoned the force of my Will, and it became soldiers, iron-clad marching soldiers, a thousand iron-clad marching soldiers in the whirlwind behind me. –Fetch the Lantern; fetch the child, I said to them, and my Will struck against the Will of Goddess San Shengmu with a mighty clash.

But then the Lotus Lantern exploded into brightness, and the brightness melted my soldiers into rain that poured down on the mountain, an iron-gray sluicing rain. I marshalled my breath again, and gathered my Will a second time, but the light from the Lotus Lantern invaded my lungs and drained me of energy.

And then the Goddess raised her Lotus Lantern still higher and I fell backwards, away from the Temple, off the mountain, my eyes fixed powerlessly on my sister’s white face, and the little bundle in her arms.

-Goddess San Shengmu! I roared as I fell, in an agony of rage. –You do not understand what humans are made of, how weak they are! You do not understand!

-And you have never understood your own weakness, my brother, she replied, and turned her face away from me to look into the face of the baby in her arms. But I continued to fall and fall away until I was sitting again in my throne in the Heavenly Hall, feverish with anger, my silver Dog quivering at my feet.

-Dog! I roared, and the Dog became like a dead dog, absolutely motionless, its breath suspended in its throat, waiting for me to speak.

-Wait until the moon is only a sliver, two nights from now, and when the night is at its darkest, be Silence itself and enter the Temple and steal the Lotus Lantern and bring it to me! And if you do not succeed, do not return or I will kill you.

And the Dog knew that what I said was good and bowed its head. And it did my bidding.

The next time it came into my presence, the Lotus Lantern, cold and blank, was clenched between its jaws. I seized the lamp with both my hands and felt its power hiding under the surface of the glass.

-Now nothing can stop the might of the Divine Erlang, I said. Now the Goddess will know the error of her choice.

And I thundered down from the Heavenly Hall and burst into the Temple of Goddess San Shengmu, and sent my Will in scampering beasts before me to chase out the angels and servants and helpers of the Goddess, until it was she alone standing before me between the pillars of her Temple, wearing a simple white sheath, her arms empty. But before I could ask what she’d done with the child, she raised both hands in the air and cried out.

-My son is dead. And my husband is gone to the Imperial City. And you have stolen my Lotus Lantern and disrupted the peace of my Temple. What more can you take from me, my brother? What have you come to do?

But there was no fear in the Goddess’ eyes, only defiance. And because of the defiance I took her out of her holy Temple, leaving its halls desolate and empty, and locked her beneath the weight of the mountain.

And when my sister’s tears reached me where I sat on my throne, I reminded myself,

You are good.

The Lotus Lantern: part 2: "The Compassionate One"

The Lotus Lantern: part 2: "The Compassionate One"

They don’t realize how difficult it sometimes is to ceaselessly respond to everyone’s prayers, to always be the beneficent one, the gracious one, to always be beautiful. I’d been off in the country restraining, once and for all, the dreadful cancer sweeping through peasant houses, when Yanchang visited my house and found me absent. I’d been wielding my lotus lantern, releasing the blade of light to slice through the sickly darkness in the mountain towns, when he scrawled his frustrated message on my polished Temple floor. I’d been busy. His insolence made me boil over with Rage.

-Let it rain on Yanchang, I commanded the heavens. Let it storm on his stupid head. Let the lightning frighten him and the mud swallow his feet; let the damp seep into his stubborn bones; let his impatient ambition be slowed by sickness.

Then I sat down to eat and drink and watch the heavy mountain wind stir the trees, sending pink blossoms spiralling out of the darkness to litter across the Temple floor, fall limpid at my feet like blessings.

But in the bottom of my silver cup I saw Yanchang’s determined face set against the storm, his feet push on through the surge of mud. I threw it onto the floor and the wine scattered.

I lifted my silver bowl but in the swirl of soup I saw Yanchang’s tired arms drop the satchel he was holding as his tired legs gave out and his body dropped into the road. I threw the bowl away and the strength of my arm sent it out across the mountain.

I stormed out of my Temple, my maidservant Lingzhi dogging my heels, and stood beside my sacred fountain, watching the spray leap up in worship and golden fish dart in the water. But in the troubled surface I saw Yanchang’s body wracked with fever, alone in the flooded road. And I could no longer stop my own Compassion as it welled up in my soul.

-Rain, wind, lightning, cease, I roared, and it ceased.

-Lingzhi, be my old peasant mother, I said, sweeping my arm and making it so.

-San Shengmu, be her daughter, I said, and I was.

And down the mountain we swept with urgency and found the crumpled body of Yanchang. My eyes filled with tears as I lifted him from the mud. How could I have forgotten my compassion? I asked myself. He wanted to know the meaning of all Life, and that is worthy.

-Be there a cottage, I commanded silently, and there was, with a fire burning and a soup over the fire and a warm bed for Yanchang.

And we put him there. While Lingzhi tended the fire I sat by Yanchang’s side, my lotus lantern in my hand above his head, its beam encircling Yanchang’s sickness, driving it away.

-Be well, Yanchang, I said, and tried, with all my heart, to make it so.

Long I waited and long the lotus lantern released its light into the room, into Yanchang’s body, struggling to stride back into life. When his eyes opened at last Yanchang looked at me with gratitude, and I laughed and laughed with relief, the sound bell-like, belying my simple appearance. Yanchang frowned.

-Why are you laughing?

-You are grateful to me, but it is I who should be grateful to you, for teaching the Compassionate One to be compassionate, I said, and my cheeks went fire-rose despite my holy and eternal Calm.

Then Yanchang sat up, his sickness gone. –Goddess San Shengmu, he said, his eyes quite gentle. And when his hand grasped my wrist the lantern dropped away unnoticed.

Billy Collins:

Billy Collins:

Every day the body works in the fields of the world
mending a stone wall
or swinging a sickle through the tall grass--
the grass of civics, the grass of money--
and every night the body curls around itself
and listens for the soft bells of sleep.

But the heart is restless and rises
from the body in the middle of the night,
leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless walls
to sit by herself at the kitchen table
and heat some milk in a pan.

And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
and opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
and roams from room to room in the dark,
darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.

And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,

resuming their daily colloquy,
talking to each other or themselves
even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body--that house of voices--
sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
to stare into the distance,

to listen to all its names being called
before bending again to its labour.



"The Night House," from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House, 2001.