He knew not, he said, whether he was a butterfly
who awoke to find he was a man
or a man who awoke to find he was a butterfly.
To begin in the image, he kills for in his dreams
he wakes from half forgotten
to the commotion of the day sealed by a story.
To begin in the image, a view before the abyss
from old familiar haunts
what clings, where there's neither choice nor chance
yet beckons, to the impossible impasse.
Breach.
Wu Ch Eng En descends
the mountain of the five elements
bearing the moon as his lamp
forever,grows longer,he muses
leaving no footprints in the snow.
At daybreak the view is emptiness
the truth of truth is its lie, he muses
to a lamp without a night.
Wu Ch Eng En rested
to speak with the world on emptiness.
He looked at the village's railings
their fierce barbs pointing to the sky
between which shadows peered
as if to promise through tricks of light
Mystery but revealing only bondage
to landscapes in whose labyrinths
you could believe you were in a place
you'd never left
and where to return was just deception.
Must not you and I be inside emptiness
for we cannot both be outside
but the world made no reply
lost to a fleeting memory
that may never return or may.
We Ch Eng En said
Day dreams the wandering mind
as lonely as a cloud, flower and song
but not without blood
the lifeless, Terra-Cota army
marches over our groundless days
outwards from the tomb.
Nature Thrives on Deception.
Chuang Tze perched
on his usual precipice and reflected
on to suicide or not to suicide.
He recalled he had worn a dark suit
dark glasses and returned
on a crowded summer's night to a past
whose memories
he could no longer remember
there he had sown his wild seed
and what had they come to now
but the way of all nothingness.
There are those who maintain
creation is a purposeless drift
and those who maintain its entelechy
can simulate a deity of divine attributes.
Chuang Tze rocked to and fro
would not such deities grow perplexed
about their state of affairs
traces of white fleece trailed
across that blue emptiness called the sky
and in that fall
from that exalted simulation
believe they were immortal souls.
Chuang Tze said
Even the wind is flawed
as it speaks through the leaves of trees
the moment of history.
Now caught in time evermore
yet the leaves belong to the branches
and make small patterns in infinity.
And we, where do we belong
with our swan song, as if we were going home
the day after tomorrow.
robin@artvilla.com
PoetryLifeTimes
Poetry Life & Times
editor@artvilla.com
www.artvilla.com
Artvilla.com
