from
THE ALL NIGHTER’S RADIO

THE PICKUP POEMS

We’ll talk about truth and mystery

you won’t see me though

all you’ll see is mountains

Pickup*

1. Economy

Monk, poet, and philosopher,

I live by myself in the high woods.

Cold Mountain they call me. The bell

at the foot of the forest path

is clapperless; hit

it with your fist or crutch.

I might not come.

If you see me I am invisible.

Each mornings the monkeys visit me:

no news. Their treetop voyages

are all one to the mountain,

here or there. When snow comes

I’ll be old. No one

will climb up here to chop my wood.

I’ll go down to the village gate

where a steel drum

keeps fire for the houseless ones,

like the star at the edge of Bethlehem,

that said NO ROOM! NO ROOM!

Beggars must be philosophers.

2. “Millions of Gathas”

I have millions of gathas

instant cures for every trouble.

Pickup

Cures for all curses?

Don’t care!

If I knew more,

would I be talking?

You know already

things are bad.

Like the farmer’s dogs

I bark and bark.

And there’s all that moon.

3. Bodhi Road

They are not thieves, your eyes,

ears, touch.

Listen. Touch.

Look closely

though your fingers burn,

though your eyes sting.

Nothing repeats. Sand,

seed,

riff in a rainbow,

desert pearl,

feather dropped from Noah’s dove,

or a nacrescent

waterdrop,

the candles on Mt. Ararat —

all, all are song.

Caress

this life,

this “Bodhi road.”

4. Fed by the Birds

Fed by the birds. That’s me,

cold poet in my mountain cave.

They boil my rice and bring it up.

I scrub my poems on the floor.

Is that a payment,

kindness,

grant?

Really, they ought to read my stuff,

after all the work they get through,

but

a poet’s like a monk, we say:

you need us, need not think of us,

except for food,

this stony verse.

5. Hermit Poem

My fellows are ghosts:

some distant, some just dead.

Sometimes a letter,

frail as a leaf

in its pencillings —

I’ve reached, sometimes,

for the telephone,

then put it down

(those awkward, counted

silences when

touching would do better)

sometimes, in my sleep

I am so sure

so sure

of this good company

I do not keep.

6. There Are So Many Deaths

The air is silent;

the wind makes noise.

Let it stream away.

Need, anger, grief —

are noisy for a little while,

but

yield them up.

Like water, flow.

Want nothing, let

silence

fill your emptiness.

The air is silent;

the wind makes noise.

Cloud weathers rattle

the forest leaves.

You, singing in your Granny hat,

flat on your back in the hospital —

your granddaughter conducting us

with a wooden spoon —

there are so many deaths,

but song —

Singing is better than silences!

(And we will sing!)

* References to The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, by Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and his colleagues Feng-kan (Big Stick) and Shih-te (Pickup), the Hermits of Tientai (8th-9th century Taoist/Buddhists), translation by Red Pine.