Tonight, on the other side of the lake,
someone is walking with a lantern.
The changing light on the water
—a blossom, a wasp, a blowfish—
calls me back from desolation
and makes me sigh with pleasure.
How can I be so foolish?
It’s true! All night
I listen to the rain
dripping in a basin…
in the morning I have a haiku.
So what!
All these years
and I think I know
just about nothing:
standing in haze by the warm lake
hearing the slap of oars
and sobbing.
For weeks now, months, a year,
I have been living here at Unreal Hut
trying to decide what delight means
and what to do with my loneliness.
Wearing a black robe,
weaving around like a bat…
Fallen persimmon, shriveled chestnut,
I see myself too clearly.
A poet named for a banana tree!
Some lines of my own come back:
Year after year
on the monkey’s face—
a monkey mask.
I suppose I know what I want:
the calm of a wooden Buddha,
the state of mind of that monk
who forgot about the snow
even as he was sweeping it!
But I can’t run away from the world.
I sit and stare for hours at
a broken pot or a bruised peach.
An owl’s call makes me dance.
I remember a renga we wrote
that had some lines by Boncho:
somebody dusts the ashes
from a grilled sardine…
And that’s the poem! That sardine!
And when it is, I feel
it is the whole world too.
But what does it mean
and how can it save you?
When my hut burned down
I stood there thinking,
“Homeless, we’re all of us homeless …”
Or all my travels, just so much
slogging around in the mire,
and all those haiku,
squiggles of light in the water…
Poems change nothing, save nothing.
Should the pupil love
the blows of the teacher?
A storm is passing over.
Lightning, reflected in the lake,
scares me and leaves me speechless.
I can’t turn away from the world
but I can go lightly…
Along the way small things
may still distract me:
a crescent moon, a farmer
digging for wild potatoes,
red pepper pods, a snapped chrysanthemum…
Love the teacher, hate the blows.
Standing in mist by the shore,
nothing much on my mind…
Wearing a black robe,
weaving around like a bat—
or crossing a wide field
wearing a cypress hat!
from Foraging (1986)